SJ Rapidlok (Ra)

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Let's keep discovering some nice bulldog nose locomotives this week. There are actually in fact quite a few of them even outside of North America. Hopefully I'll be able to sniff them out one by one eventually. Anyway. You can think of this week's feature locomotive as a double ended electric F-unit. Not that the locomotive herself has anything to do with the F-unit, but to us North Americans, the F-unit is truly the bulldog nose icon.



So here we have the Ra or Rapidlok (lok: locomotive) from Sweden. Only 10 were built between 1955 and 1961 by ASEA (maker of our fast little toasters), the Ra was exclusively for (well, name has it) express passenger trains. According to the Swedish page on Wikipedia this locomotive generated quite a buzz when she debuted with her slick looks and bridge orange color scheme. In addition to their SJ road numbers, the Ra also had their own through Rapid 1 to Rapid 10. The 4 axles of the Rapidlok transfer an impressive 3,540 hp onto the rails and the locomotive has a top speed of 93 mph. The Ra has made her final revenue run in 1996 but a few are preserved and still kicking around.

Interesting looking cab

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