Schalke
Schalke develops, manufactures and supplies its locomotives to locations throughout the world. They are tailor-made to handle widely varying customer requirements and equipped with highly practical innovations – such as exchangeable Power packs. If the need arises, any Modu-Trac locomotive can be simply converted from diesel to battery operation in less than one hour and also to other traction technologies in future as well, due to its modular design. Already today, equipped with an additional pantograph, the locomotive can also be operated as a multi-mode unit.
The Schalke locomotive success story had its origins in Gelsenkirchen and – like nearly all stories from the Ruhr district – it all began with mining. On 21 August 1872, Friedrich Grillo founded Schalker Eisenhütte Maschinenfabrik GmbH, a company that manufactured machinery and spare parts for use in underground mining. These included brakes, trucks, winding drums and tempered cast steel for the wheels of mine cars and trucks. The enterprise also produced coke oven equipment and castings in clay and sand as well as hard iron castings. Right from the beginning, Schalke products were known for their robustness, enduring strength and reliability – ideal for daily use in extremely rugged conditions.
Ten years later, Schalke built the first coke pusher machines. These gigantic steam-driven “monstrosi- ties” were the forerunners of a series of coke oven machinery that also included transfer cars, guide machines and quenching cars. At that time, locomotives were used to pull the coke oven machinery – and therefore Schalke took the next logical step and began building locomotives in its own right. The company’s port- folio was soon enlarged to include coke quenching cars and transport locomotives, all with the reliability that had become typical for Schalke. The powerful working machinery became popular – and opened up a promising market for the future.
In 1937 Schalke began producing 70-tonne catenary wire locomotives for mining brown coal in the Rhine district. By 1954 the company had built a total of 34 locomotives, cooperating with renowned electric companies such as Siemens, AEG and BBC to manufacture the first dual-mode catenary wire and battery-powered mining locomotives. Schalke’s expertise in the field of locomotives therefore grew continually, particularly when it came to innovative and alternative drive systems.
