Sächsische Maschinenfabrik

The majority were delivered to the Royal Saxon State Railways (Königlich Sächsische Staatseisenbahnen), but customers for her locomotives were to be found worldwide.

But the most important business was for some time the repair and design of individual technical solutions (equivalent to the present-day concept of special purpose machines).

To begin with their major customer, the Royal Saxon State Railways, had to be convinced of the quality of their products through the delivery of very small batches of engines.

In 1878 the 1000th locomotive left the production line of the Sächsischen Maschinenfabrik, numerous business expansions followed during this period, in order to meet the steadily growing demand from around the world.

At the beginning of the 20th century the business had also built up a strong armaments branch and produced, amongst other things, guns, artillery equipment and munitions.

But only 13 engines of the newly developed DRG Class 99.73-76 standard locomotives were delivered for the Saxon narrow gauge railways.

In 1928 the 'King Friedrich-August Works' in Potschappel was sold off again; the very disparate textile machinery division was restructured, and steam roller and locomotive construction ceased in 1929.

Richard Hartmann AG' was liquidated in 1930, and the remaining economical core of the textile machinery division was incorporated into the newly formed Sächsische Textilmaschinenfabrik vorm.

Its main market in Eastern Europe was breaking up and overwhelming competition led to its amalgamation with two other Saxon textile machinery companies to form the CSM-Sächsische Spinnereimaschinen GmbH Chemnitz, but despite producing technically, high-quality products the firm ceased production in 1998 and subsequent folded, whereupon the last manufacturing elements of the firm's long tradition finally disappeared.

The firm has also left a special legacy of its contribution to the provision of locomotives for the Saxon narrow gauge railways to this day.