With the adoption of the 1955 diesel locomotive type program, the foundation for a success story was laid at the Deutsche Bundesbahn (DB) [German Federal Railway] which, to some extent, continues to the present day. The decision was made to develop a diesel locomotive for the secondary railway service with an engine output of between 1, 000 and 1, 200 HP, the V 100 series. By 1957, this resulting catalogue of requirements thus lead to a largely completed construction of which the Deutsche Bundesbahn ordered six trial locomotives. With the V 100 000, the first of 744 manufactured locomotives of the V 100 series left the MaK factory halls in Kiel in March 1958. Like no other locomotive series, it embodied the structural change on the railway that was inevitibly coming.