The

Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane S.p.A. ( "Italian Railways of the State"; previously only Ferrovie dello Stato, hence the abbreviation FS) is Italy's national state-owned railway holding company that manages transport, infrastructure, real estate ...

(FS; Italian State Railways) Class 600 (Italian: ''Gruppo 600''), formerly Rete Adriatica Class 380 and Società per le Strade Ferrate Meridionali Class 380, is a

2-6-0 Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, represents the wheel arrangement of two leading wheels on one axle, usually in a leading truck, six powered and coupled driving wheels on three axles and no trailing whee ...

'Mogul' steam locomotive; it is considered by some as the first Italian modern steam locomotive.

Design and construction

Designed in

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico ...

for the Rete Adriatica by engineers such as Enrico Plancher and

Giuseppe Zara Giuseppe Zara (Fermo, 1856 – Sanremo, 1915) was an Italian inventor. He was a member of the Società Italiana per le Strade Ferrate Meridionali, and the director of Ferrovie dello Stato from 1905. He graduated at the Technical Institute of Fermo ...

, the Class 600 was meant to pull both passenger and freight trains on the steep and curvy Italian lines at a reasonable speed. It introduced several novelties in Italian locomotive practice, the most notable of which is undoubtedly the Italian bogie: a derivation of the German Krauss-Helmholtz bogie, it was meant to ensure good performance in curves without requiring a four-wheel bogie; it proved very successful, and it would become a staple of Italian steam locomotives. Another notable feature was the application of the

Walschaerts valve gear The Walschaerts valve gear is a type of valve gear used to regulate the flow of steam to the pistons in steam locomotives, invented by Belgium, Belgian railway mechanical engineering, engineer Egide Walschaerts in 1844. The gear is sometimes name ...

on a locomotive with internal cylinders but outside piston valves, coupled with a

compound engine A compound engine is an engine that has more than one stage for recovering energy from the same working fluid, with the exhaust from the first stage passing through the second stage, and in some cases then on to another subsequent stage or even s ...

. The arrangement would return on other locomotive classes such as the Class 630 and the Class 745. The first 50 locomotives were built with a boiler that allowed for a power output of ; the remaining locomotives were built with bigger boilers (also refitted to some of the earlier locomotives over the years) that gave them a higher value of . Some of the first locomotives were numbered under the RA and the SFM (''Strade Ferrate Meridionali'') ownership, until they were absorbed by the Ferrovie dello Stato respectively in 1905 and 1906; two more, built for the Valsugana valley railway, were taken over by the FS in 1912. In all, 248 locomotives were built between 1904 and 1908. All were fitted with a standard six-wheeled tender.

Service and conversions

The Class 600 proved very successful in service, and paved the way for their simple-expansion and superheated derivatives of the Class 625. In 1927, the 600.168 was rebuilt with a superheated 625 boiler, and was reclassified as 601.168. However, the experiment was not followed on, and it was preferred, starting from 1929, to outright convert the locomotives to Class 625 status. In all, 153 locomotives were converted to 625.3XX until 1933. The remaining unrebuilt Class 600 locomotives were gradually withdrawn before 1940.

References

* * {{FS locos 600 2-6-0 locomotives Compound locomotives Gio. Ansaldo & C. locomotives Berliner locomotives Henschel locomotives Esslingen locomotives Sächsische Maschinenfabrik locomotives Railway locomotives introduced in 1905 Standard gauge locomotives of Italy 1′C n2v locomotives Freight locomotives