Diesel locomotive Therefore, diesel traction became economical for shunting before it became economical for hauling trains. The construction of diesel shunters began in 1920 in France, in 1925 in Denmark, in 1926 in the Netherlands, and in 1927 in Germany. After few years of testing, hundreds of units were produced within a decade. Diesel-powered or "oil-engined" railcars, generally diesel–mechanical, were developed by various European manufacturers in the 1930s, e.g. by William Beardmore and Company for the Canadian National Railways (the Beardmore Tornado engine was subsequently used in the R101 airship). Some of those series for regional traffic were begun with gasoline motors
Diesel locomotive the engine. In 1906, Rudolf Diesel, Adolf Klose and the steam and diesel engine manufacturer Gebrüder Sulzer founded Diesel-Sulzer-Klose GmbH to manufacture diesel-powered locomotives. Sulzer had been manufacturing Diesel engines since 1898. The Prussian State Railways ordered a diesel locomotive from the company in 1909, and after test runs between Winterthur and Romanshorn the diesel–mechanical locomotive was delivered in Berlin in September 1912. The world's first diesel-powered locomotive was operated in the summer of 1912 on the Winterthur–Romanshorn railroad in Switzerland, but was not a commercial success. During further test runs in 1913 several problems were found. After the First