Liliput L133215 H0 Diesel train set, 628 001-0/628 011-9, "Lindau", EP.IV, Scharfenberg

Series 628.0
In the early 1970s, the Munich Federal Railways Central Office, in cooperation with the wagon factory Uerdingen, began to design a successor to the Uerdinger railbuses (VT 95 – VT 98). The new series was intended to replace the rail buses and the battery-powered train sets of the series 515. The vehicles should also be used on main railways, but in terms of operating costs they should not be more expensive than a rail bus.

In 1974, the wagon factory Uerdingen together with MaK presented the prototypes of the two-part series 628.0 and the one-piece series 627. In contrast to all subsequent series of the 628 series, the side walls of the 628.0 and 627 had been snapped underneath the windows. Some units came to Bw Braunschweig and from there on the non-electrified routes in the Harz and the Weserbergland. The remaining were stationed in Bw Kempten (Allgäu), where the Braunschweig 628.0 followed them in June 1980. From there, they were on all routes in the Allgäu until the end of 2002. In 1985, the Scharfenberg couplings of the vehicles were replaced by buffer beams. From 2003, they will only be traveling on the off-highway, in January 2005 the last vehicle (628 008/018) was parked. Some were scrapped, others sold to Poland.

Despite long testing and good proof of the 628.0, however, there was no major mass production, as the local rail passenger transport was recently re-evaluated by the political side and it was unclear how many vehicles were still needed. It was only a few years later that they decided to continue the 628 series. The series 628.1 and later 628.2 and 628.4, whose success story is well known as the savior of the branch lines…

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