The type T 1 stood for multiple types of small tank locomotives which the Prussian State Railways either built as a standard type or inherited from private railways. They were intended for omnibus trains on secondary lines. The standard type was built 74 times by Schichau and Henschel between 1882 and 1886. It was a simple two-cylinder 0-4-0T, but in 1883 Schichau built an additional compound locomotive for comparison. No more compounds of this type were built, however, this locomotive continued to be used in parallel with its sisters.

Of a special type for the Bromberg directorate, the first two locomotives were compounds which had been manufactured by Schichau in 1880 and measured only 6,489 mm in length. In 1882, BMAG manufactured six more which were simples and had drivers which were 50 mm smaller. The Magdeburg directorate had received seven of its own type which had larger drivers than the previously described types. A type that was used by several directorates was designed at the company Hohenzollern by their director Lentz and was thus named after him. It had cylinders between the axles to increase the running characteristics and was built 20 times for different customers. Since these locomotives, also called “Hohenzollern-Patentlok” only designated a general layout, they differed from customer to customer and weighed between 14.3 and 26 tonnes.

Most of the regional types and many of the standard type were retired around 1910. When the Reichsbahn created its numbering plan, the last remaining T 1 of the Prussian State Railways was to be numbered 98 7021. But in the end, it was also retired in 1924 and never received this number. When the remaining private railways in East Germany were nationalized in 1950, the Reichsbahn got two T 1 of the standard type and numbered them 98 6005 and 98 6008.