Qualla: Schöma

Schöma: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gerd Fahrenhorst, CC BY 4.0. By the time the 6,000th locomotive rolled off the assembly line, the company that built it was celebrating its seventy-fifth birthday. That is roughly one locomotive a month, every month, for three-quarters of a century — and most of them were one-offs, hand-built to specifications nobody else needed. Schöma occupies a flat industrial site in Diepholz that you would drive past without noticing, but the machines it produces have spent decades dragging spoil out of subway tunnels under Singapore, hauling peat across northern German bogs, and switching freight on Pacific island railways that no one outside the islands has ever heard of. The Schöttler family has run the place for four generations, and they are still here.

Read more: Schöma on Qualla

Image: Gerd Fahrenhorst | CC BY 4.0

Schöma: A Family Quarrel in 1930

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit fortif88, Public domain. The story begins with a falling-out. Christoph Schöttler worked for his father's firm, the Diepholzer Maschinenfabrik Fritz Schöttler — DIEMA for short — and the two men disagreed about what the company should build. So in 1930 Christoph left, founded his own machine works on the...

Read more: Schöma on Qualla

Image: fortif88 | Public domain

Schöma: The Tunnel Locomotive Pivot

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Whgler, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1970 the company made another bet that paid off for decades: it began designing tunnel locomotives — short, powerful, narrow-gauge machines built to haul spoil out of subway and utility tunnels being dug under cities everywhere. Today these tunnel locomotives are the majority ...

Read more: Schöma on Qualla

Image: Whgler | CC BY-SA 4.0

Schöma: The Locomotive on the Roundabout

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jwaller, CC BY-SA 3.0. Drive west out of Diepholz toward Damme, on the highway through Lohne (Oldenburg), and at one roundabout a 1943 Schöma narrow-gauge locomotive sits permanently parked, an empty peat car still hooked to its drawbar. It was installed on 19 May 2011. For decades that exact type of m...

Read more: Schöma on Qualla

Image: Jwaller | CC BY-SA 3.0

Schöma: Island Railways and One-Off Engineering

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Corradox, CC BY-SA 3.0. Schöma also builds the locomotives that run on island railways — narrow-gauge or normal-gauge lines on places where importing a custom machine is easier than tooling up a local foundry. The company designed its own engines, its own transmissions, even its own drive shafts, becaus...

Read more: Schöma on Qualla

Image: Corradox | CC BY-SA 3.0

Schöma: Four Generations, Still Family-Owned

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Corradox, CC BY-SA 3.0. As of 2012, the fourth generation of the Schöttler family took over running the company. In an industry where consolidation has eaten most of the small specialty builders, Schöma has stayed independent and stayed in Diepholz. It is the kind of German Mittelstand story that gets w...

Read more: Schöma on Qualla

Image: Corradox | CC BY-SA 3.0