Bombardier IORE

By Yi -
For the readers who missed the posts in the past two weeks, we talked about the 110 mph General Electric diesel-electric locomotive P42DC Genesis (link here) and once the flagship transcontinental passenger train of the Canadian Pacific Railway The Canadian (link here).

Let's take a break from passenger equipments and look at a very powerful freight locomotive this week.  The Bombardier IORE is a 12-axle twin-section electric locomotive designed exclusively for LKAB (Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag), a Swedish mining company, to haul heavy (8,000 metric tonnes) iron ore trains (hence the name IORE) at 60 km/h (37 mph) in extreme Nordic weather conditions of northern Sweden and Norway.  It was first commissioned in Year 2000.  The IORE, or TRAXX H80AC, is an AC-propulsion locomotive that belongs in the TRAXX family of Bombardier locomotives.  The top speed of the IORE is 80 km/h (50 mph).



The IORE uses 12 electric motors to power its axles (i.e. one motor per axle), the overhead cantenary system provides 15 kV, 16.7 Hz AC electricity to its pantographs.  The IORE weighs 360 metric tonnes and its total rated tractive effort (refer to the bottom of this post to revise what tractive effort is if you wish) at the wheels is 1,200 kN (269,800 lbf).  The total rated power output of the IORE at the wheels is 10.8 MW (14,500 hp).



For next week, if there are no other suggestions, I can talk about the MotivePower (a Wabtec company) MP40PH-3C diesel electric passenger locomotive used by GO Transit (part of Metrolinx) of the Greater Toronto Area.  (12 Jan., the MP40PH-3C will have to wait for a couple of weeks now at least.  We have the SD90MAC and something from Japan lined up next.)

Comments

Anonymous said…
8,000 tons? That ain't heavy! UP and BN do 18,000 tons of coal regularly in the west.
Jan 8, 2010, 5:05:00 PM
Yi said…
Trains that are a lot heavier than 8,000 tonnes are not uncommon in North America, Australia, and China. The point here is though that each unit of the IORE is designed to handle 8,000 tonnes, although you may argue that a unit of IORE is really 2 units stuck together.
Jan 8, 2010, 5:43:00 PM
Anonymous said…
i just found this blog. thanks for taking the time to share in this passion of trains! i love hearing about rarities like the IORE or the sd90 in the next post.
Feb 2, 2011, 3:26:00 AM
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