Train of the Week

I've missed this blog again, this time due to some family medical stuff that required quite some of my attention. All is fine though. Anyway I had a chance to stroll around the vast inter web for some time again, with the hopes that I'd find some technical papers of my interest. I found this, a catalogue of bogies  by Siemens, or in North American English, trucks, offered on various rail vehicles. It's not all that technical, more of a marketing brochure. The interesting bit is though, this catalogue does reference the types of rail vehicles in service each truck has been fitted to. Are some of your favourite equipment listed in the reference sections of the catalogue? Now it's your chance to have a more complete look on what they really look under those skirts. Cheers!

Wait. What? The Class 43 again? Haven't it already been regurgitated on this blog a couple of times already as the locomotive only and the InterCity? Well, this Class 43 ain't our usual Class 43. This Class 43 was a being of the very early 1960s, at the time when TOPS classification still wasn't a thing. TOPS stands for Total Operations Processing System. It was a computer system to manage and track all locomotives and cars used by a railroad. Although made popular among the railfans by British Railways, this system was actually developed by one of the fallen flags in our neck of the woods and was said to be used by a number of our railroads as well. The TOPS system was developed by the famous Southern Pacific Railroad, now part of railroad giant Union Pacific. Anyway, so, the Class 43. Well, she really is pretty much the same as the Class 42 I've briefed about last week, based on the same German twin-engined diesel hydraulic locomotive, except built at a later d...

So I did some digging on Wikipedia (initially quite aimlessly actually) on the relatively recent comeback of multi-engined diesel locomotives. Actually I didn't realize the popularity of multi-engined, especially twin engined diesel locomotives, back in the days until literally a couple of hours ago. It all makes sense though. When you need big power out of engines in an era where they just can't produce that much, you jam more of them in. Not a bad looking little thing at all This locomotive I'm writing about today is quite an oldie and is apparently closely related to a German diesel hydraulic locomotive of the same era. She's called the Class 42 and she has nothing to do with the more popular Class 43 that we all cherish. This is one of the 2 preserved units. Interestingly they have inboard bearings like our LRC and Amfleet cars There have been 2 batches of Class 42s, both built by British Railways Swindon Works between 1958 and 1961. They differ by engin...