Under the designation T 13, the Prussian State Railways combined various types of tender locomotives for goods train operations, which had four coupled axles and no carrying axles. They were built from 1910 until the early 1920's and most of them used saturated steam to reduce manufacturing costs and maintenance. Only a part were superheated and two other sub-types produced in small numbers had a special chassis to improve the ability to negotiate curves.

The most widespread variant by numbers was the actual T 13, of which a total of 512 were manufactured for Prussia from 1910 onwards. Since the design came from the Union foundry in Königsberg, this variant is also known as the “Union variant”. In addition, Oldenburg procured 60 engines of this type and the Reichseisenbahnen Alsace-Lorraine ten more. Although the speed limit of 45 km/h for goods trains had already been lifted at the time of development, the T 13 was only designed for this speed. Instead, a larger tractive force was achieved with a smaller wheel diameter. Most engines had an axle load of 15 tons, only the last ones from 1921 and 1922 were slightly heavier.

T 13¹

Weisbrod/Müller/Petznik, Dampflokomotiven 3

From 1921 the T 13¹ was manufactured, which used the advantages of superheated steam and was therefore able to increase the output from 500 to 600 hp with hardly any increase in weight. The first 13 machines came from Hanomag and were delivered to the newly founded Reichsbahn division in Oldenburg. Another five were produced by Krauss and were intended for the Saar railways.

One of the two T 13 variants with a special chassis was the Hagans type. Although supplied by Henschel, it used the development of the Erfurt company Hagans. The two front axles were fixed within the frame, while the two rear axles were mounted on a bogie with limited movability. The coupling rods transmitted their power to the rear axles via a complicated lever system, which, like other Hagans locomotives, turned out to be too maintenance-intensive. These 29 engines were built between 1899 and 1902, long before the actual T 13, and were retired by 1923.

92 503 (Union variant) in Dresden traffic museum, being the third T 13 build

Bernhard Korch

The second special design consisted of five Mallet locomotives that had been manufactured from 1903 for the Bergheimer Kreisbahn and the Mödrath-Liblar-Brühler Eisenbahn. They later came to the state railway and were designated there as T 13 and given the numbers Cöln 7946 to Cöln 7950. They too retired from service in 1921.

In contrast to these, the standard types remained in service for a longer time. The saturated T 13 were taken over by the Reichsbahn as the class 92^5-10 and a large number of them continued to be used after the Second World War. They were phased out in western and eastern Germany in 1965 and 1968, respectively. Since the T 13¹ was only built in small numbers, the engines remaining in the western zones were sold to private railways by 1948 after the war. Until then, they were in service as class 92⁴.