In 1927, the Antofagasta-Bolivia Railway in Chile received 20 powerful 2-8-4T locomotives from the North British Locomotive Company. These had become necessary because the conversion of the entire line to meter gauge was coming to an end. The design of these locomotives was carried out by the railroad's engineers Hilary Hood and Eduardo Gerrard at their shop at Mejillone. Although built in Britain, these locomotives had a very American appearance with sand domes on top of the boiler, an air pump mounted on the side of the smokebox, a Worthington feed water heater and a large cab. They remained in service until the early sixties and only No. 34 was preserved. After a restoration that started in 2001, it was again under its own steam in 2004.

The second tank locomotive within the new construction program of the Bundesbahn was a locomotive with the 2-8-4T wheel arrangement, which was intended for passenger and freight trains on shorter distances within urban areas. The maximum speed of 85 km/h was sufficient for this area of service and with an axle load of almost 17 tonnes, it could also be used on many secondary lines. Production comprised 13 engines in 1951 and five more between 1955 and 1956. The last seven were factory-equipped with push-pull controls and were intended for the Ruhr Valley Railway between Düsseldorf and Essen.

Technically, they corresponded to the other new-build locomotives of the Bundesbahn, i.e. they had a welded high-performance boiler and a fully enclosed cab. During the construction period there were some adjustments to the design. A surface preheater was used on the engines of the 1951 series and a mixing preheater on the later ones. Improvements were also made to the chassis in terms of running characteristics and the water tank on the later engines was no longer welded to the cab, as this had led to problems.

If you compare the reserves with the somewhat heavier 65¹⁰ of the Reichsbahn, it is noticeable that the coal capacity here was only 4.8 tonnes compared to nine tonnes for the Reichsbahn locomotive. This limited the operational area of the locomotives from the Bundesbahn, since the range was too small for many applications. As with all new build steam locomotives, the service life was very short. As early as 1966 the first ones were retired and number 65 018 was the last in 1972. This is kept operational in the Netherlands today.

The 83¹⁰ was one of the less successful types of the new-build steam locomotives of the Reichsbahn in the GDR. It was developed together with the heavier 65¹⁰, but was not convincing in contrast to this. Both had the axle arrangement 2-8-4T, but in contrast to its sister, the 83¹⁰ was designed for branch lines with an axle load of 15 instead of 17.5 tonnes. This meant a smaller driver diameter, and therefore a lower top speed and less power. As with the 65¹⁰, a plate frame was used here.

Already during the testing of the first two engines, some defects became known, but due to the circumstance that series production had already started, these could only be partially remedied by subsequent repairs. Above all, the use of the low-energy lignite required some structural adjustments, which were already implemented before the completion of extensive tests and ultimately turned out to be immature. Since the imminent use of diesel locomotives became apparent as early as the 1950s, only 27 units of the class 83¹⁰ were made. Although the Reichsbahn had a large number of steam locomotives in regular service well into the 1980s, the last locomotive of this class was retired in 1974.

At the beginning of the 1950s, the Reichsbahn developed two tank locomotives with a 2-8-4T wheel arrangement to replace a large number of old models, most of which dated back to the Länderbahn era. One of them was the class 65¹⁰, which with an axle load of 17.5 tonnes was suitable for main lines and well-developed secondary lines. The numbering from 1000 upwards indicates that this was a new locomotive and also made it easier to distinguish it from the Bundesbahn class 65 with the same wheel arrangement. At the same time, the class 83¹⁰ was created, which had an axle load of only 15 tonnes and was therefore slower and less powerful.

Following the trend of the time, the frame and boiler of the new locomotive were welded. A mixing preheater was also installed above the smoke box, which heated and softened the boiler feed water. In this way, water savings of more than 10 percent could be achieved. The advantage of the selected axle arrangement with a rear bogie was that the water tank could be designed very generously for a tank locomotive. There was space for 9 tonnes of coal and 16 cubic meters of water. As with all new Reichsbahn builds, the design was optimized for operation with the inferior lignite, with the dimensioning of the grate area playing a particularly important role. The 65 1004 was the only tank locomotive to be converted to pulverized coal firing, but this was reversed in 1962.

The Reichsbahn procured a total of 88 units, the first two of which were manufactured by LEW Hennigsdorf and the rest by Lokomotivbau Karl Marx Babelsberg. Seven more were produced for the chemical combine Leuna. An important area of application for the locomotives of the Reichsbahn were double-decker trains. Since there were also push-pull trains among them, nine engines were equipped with push-pull train controls. After class V 180 diesel locomotives had taken over these tasks, class 65¹⁰ locomotives almost exclusively pulled freight trains. They were decommissioned by 1977 and today there are still three units that were subsequently used as heating locomotives and therefore survived.