The Royal Prussian State Railway put the D-coupled hot steam locomotive type G 8.1 into service in 1913. With around 5,200 units built, this type of locomotive was probably the most frequently built freight steam locomotive ever. Robustly built and powerful, the BR 5525-56 locomotives, as they were known from the end of the 1920s, were in service with both the German and some European railway administrations until well after the Second World War. It was not until 1972 that the DB took the last locomotives out of service. The new Rivarossi models in brief: