No fewer than 2,159 working locomotives were taken over by the Deutsche Bundesbahn alone and, for a long time, they formed the backbone of goods traffic operations together with the larger DRG Class 44.

On 735 of the DB machines the tender was fitted with a conductor's cab, which meant that the volume of the coal bunker had to be reduced.

50 622 is stabled in the Nuremberg Transport Museum, where, on the evening of 17 October 2005, it was badly damaged in the great fire at the locomotive shed.

After the Second World War many examples of Class 50 engines were left in the other European states and some were used until the end of the steam traction era.

In 1959 ten locomotives were given a boiler with smaller grate area in order to try to reduce the consumption of coal.

Adolph Giesl-Gieslingen describes in his book „Anatomie der Dampflokomotive" that the Sulfuric acid in the smoke condensed in the preheater and attacked the Heat exchanger.

The conversion to Diesel and Electric locos led Italy and Germany both to abandon development of the Franco Crosti smoke pre-heater.

In the harsh everyday work of steam locomotives the material became very quickly fatigued, so that boilers made of the new steel had to be replaced after only a few years.

Between 1958 and 1962, 208 Class 50 locomotives were given such a boiler, along with a mixer preheater, a larger radiative heating area and improved suction draught, which also raised its performance.

After the conversion of engines to oil-fired Class 50.50, the remaining coal-fired ones were concentrated in the Magdeburg division.

Replacing older locomotives as well as oil-fired ones, they returned to the Dresden and Schwerin divisions again by the end of the 1970s.

This meant that they could now chemically process Bunker oil D; with the result that it was not longer available for locomotive firing.

In the Bavarian Railway Museum (Bayerischen Eisenbahnmuseum) in Nördlingen the last representative of this class, number 50 0072, is preserved.

The boiler was a new build to modern construction standards with a combustion chamber and a mixer preheater.

Because the plate frame soon proved to be the weakest link (with a high repair bill), the locos were taken out of traction service by 1980, but continued to be used as heating engines.

The Bavarian Railway Museum (Bayerische Eisenbahnmuseum) in Nördlingen has acquired the last preserved engine of this type, number 50 4073.

After the Second World War several Class 50 locomotives were left in eastern Europe, where some of the railway administrations procured more of them.

For example, the Romanian State Railway CFR produced 282 copies of Class 50 locomotives between 1947 and 1959.