The Adler (German for "Eagle") was the first locomotive that was successfully used commercially for the rail transport of passengers and goods in Germany.

The Adler was a steam locomotive of the Patentee type with a wheel arrangement of 2-2-2 (Whyte notation) or 1A1 (UIC classification).

During the construction of the Bavarian Ludwig Railway, founded by Georg Zacharias Platner, the search for a suitable locomotive started in England.

The first letter of enquiry was sent via the London company, Suse und Libeth, to Robert Stephenson & Co. and Braithwaite & Ericsson.

The German company, Holmes and Rolandson from Unterkochen near Aalen, offered a steam locomotive with a power of between two and six horsepower (1.5 and 4.5 kW) at a price of 4,500 Gulden.

The delivery of the locomotive to Nuremberg, together with all its spares comprising over 100 individual components in 19 boxes with a total weight of 177 long hundredweight (19,800 lb; 9,000 kg), came to a cost of £1,140/19/3.

The board of directors of the Bavarian Ludwig Railway wanted the purchase to be exempted from import duty.

After several difficulties the Ministry of Finance approved the tax-free import with Johann Wilhelm Spaeth as the recipient of the consignment.

[5] As the waterline in the Rhine was low, Captain van Hees had to use horses to pull the barge instead of the steamboat, as originally planned.

On 10 November 1835, the board of directors of the Bavarian Ludwig Railway expressed their hope that the locomotive would be serviceable soon.

The German constructor Paul Camille von Denis had planned that the railway wagons should be pulled either from the steam locomotive, or from horses, making a lighter construction necessary.

During the following tests it was discovered that, if wood was burned in the locomotive, the sparks which came out of its chimney singed the clothing of the passengers.

On 7 December 1835 the Adler, driven by William Wilson, ran for the first time on the 6.05 kilometres long track of the Ludwigsbahn[9] in nine minutes.

It was scrapped in 1855, and in 1858 the railway company sold the locomotive with the tender but minus its wheels and further accessories to the iron dealer Mr. Director Riedinger located in Augsburg.

To celebrate the centenary of the railways in Germany in 1935, a replica of the Adler was built beginning from 1933 by the Deutsche Reichsbahn in the Kaiserslautern repair shop (Ausbesserungswerk), which was largely true to the original.

The original idea of the President of the Reichsbahn Julius Dorpmüller and the members of his staff was to use the Adler-replica as an instrument of propaganda for the "new era" in the city of the Reichsparteitag Nuremberg.

They planned to contrast the Adler with modern gigantic steam locomotives like the high-speed DRG Class 05.

From 14 July until 13 October 1935, visitors could travel with the reconstructed Adler-train on a track length of two kilometres on the area of the centenary exhibition in Nuremberg.

In 1950, the Adler-train was displayed by the Deutsche Bundesbahn on a street transport vehicle for rolling stock during a parade of the 900-years-jubilee of Nuremberg.

[13] For the 125th anniversary of the railway in Germany the Adler-train was in service on the track of the tram between Nuremberg (Plärrer place) and Fürth Hauptbahnhof.

The Adler was displayed on the great jubilee exhibition in Nuremberg and took part of numerous events in west Germany like for example in Hamburg, Konstanz and Munich.

[18] The still-working Adler replica was one of many engines that were badly damaged when a fire broke in the museum's roundhouse at the Nuremberg West locomotive depot on 17 October 2005.

The wreck was lifted from the ruins of the roundhouse on 7 November by a mobile crane in a four-hour operation by a recovery gang from the Preßnitz Valley Railway and taken by special low-loader to the Meiningen Steam Locomotive Works.

It was discovered that the boiler at least, thanks to its being full of water, was relatively undamaged, although its entire wooden cladding had been burnt and many plates had melted, and it could therefore be used for the reconstruction in 2007.

[21] The director of the DB Museum Nuremberg assuaged fears before the reconstruction began that the rebuilding work would not be able to replicate the details of the locomotive damaged by the fire and explained: "No compromises will be made!"

It was even more accurately built by using historical drawings, so for example the reconstruction of the chimney damaged in the fire was not based on the 1935 replica, but on the original design.

In the museum the non-serviceable replica from 1950 is displayed and also the original second class 1835 built and 1838 and 1846 rebuilt passenger wagon No 8 of the Bavarian Ludwig Railway which has not been put on track again because of conservation reasons.

Another replica that, unlike the 1935 version, is not operational, was appointed by the advertising office of the Deutsche Bundesbahn and built during the 1950s at the Ausbesserungswerk in Munich-Freimann.

As part of the town's millennium celebrations "1000 years in Fürth" a bus was decorated with the Adler, and advertised an exhibition, at which donations for the reconstruction were collected.

Also a 10 Euro commemorative coin of the mint in Munich (D) with the following inscription on the edge Auf Vereinten Gleisen 1835 - 2010 (= On united tracks 1835 - 2010).