MB839

The sixteen came out of the same 1959 enlargement that produced the twelve-cylinder MB 835 — identical 190 mm bore, 230 mm stroke and 45° vee, four more cylinders, 104 liters. Daimler-Benz sold it as a pre-chamber engine for rail vehicles, boats and stationary plant, rated at 2,000 PS and, with charge-air cooling as the Bb, 2,400. Rail was where it mattered. Series-built V 160 locomotives used a single unit set to 1,900 PS at 1,500 rpm, and it carried on into the Class 217 and 753 machines and many Class 216s under its MTU name, MB 16 V 652 TB.

Henschel built the V 320 001 in 1962 at its own expense, as a single speculative machine: six axles, 126 tonnes, two MB 839 Bb engines, and the largest and most powerful diesel locomotive ever to work for the Deutsche Bundesbahn. Testing at the Bundesbahn-Zentralamt went well — it stayed impressively steady at speeds up to 180 km/h — and the DB declined to purchase it anyway. The locomotive was hired instead, ran heavy trains from Hamm and later on the Allgäu line, became 232 001 in 1968, and was eventually re-engined with the MTU-badged version of the same design.