Train of the Week

What I’m blogging about today, doesn’t exactly exist in real life yet, but it’s been a while since the last time I wrote about anything British. It was just on the news , by the way. Don’t know if the little Pacer DMUs ring a bell to anyone who reads this blog, but they are literally busses on rails (bus frame plus four steel wheels). They are interesting to see, and ride once in a while. They sound like an old bus, rattle like an old bus, and the experience is quite unique. Sadly, or maybe not so to people who might be stuck with them on their commute, they are about to be replaced by new Spanish built DMUs that will enter service when Arriva (pronounced Deutschebahn) takes over the Northern franchise. The new DMU is called the Class 195, and its production has officially commenced this week. For that reason, there’s only this artist rendering which I can't share with you (but here it is in Wikipedia), but I’m sure pictures will surface when the time comes. These trains are e...

After the post on the shiny rebuilt GE road power, it's only fair to have a look into what Progress Rail has to offer on their side of the table. I'm using the company's recently-changed, formal name of course. For those who are not up-to-date on the current state of North American railroading affairs, Progress Rail is the company (owned by Caterpillar) that purchased EMD a few years ago. The SD90MAC was arguably the biggest gong show in EMD's recent memory. It happened at a time when they were comfortably resting on their laurels, unaware the fateful changes that were about to occur in the locomotive market in the not-so-distant future (they got beaten badly by GE). What was supposed to be one of the most remarkable locomotives whose presence is to grace the mainlines in modern history, turned out to be an utter disaster (I'll redirect further readings to Wikipedia). As a result, today, the number of SD90s still in operation on a Class 1 Railroad is, if not id...

North American railroads are no strangers to rebuilding older locomotives to help lower cost. Unlike many parts of the world, the adhesion-limited operating environment often means that our locomotives are heavier and moderately powered. At one point in history, First Class Railroads have converged onto the ideal mainline locomotive, a six-axle unit having about 4,400 hp, and weighing at about 400,000 lbs. By Nstrainman1006 - Taking a photo. Previously published: YYYY-MM-DD, CC BY-SA 4.0 , Link In the 1990s, amid the market dominated by General Motors, the microprocessor-controlled Dash 9 Series was the revolution General Electric needed that kick-started their rise to the top. Within the series, there was the C40-9W , a limited-power edition of the mainstream C44-9W , specifically conceived for the Norfolk Southern. Starting in late 2013, these units were converted to the C44, and then two years later, some started further upgrades to, eventually, become the AC44C6M. Compa...

It was a long weekend here in Germany last week, and the Eisenbahnmuseum Bochum put on a good show to celebrate its 40-year history. Well, I confess, of course I hadn't found out about any of it until it was almost too late. Click here to view the entire album In the spirits of the East Meets West theme, many locomotives from other railway museums across Germany joined their brethren in Bochum-Dahlhausen. I attended on the extra-special day, May 1, der Fototag (Photo Day), where locomotives paraded down the track, providing lots of photo ops for foamers of all sizes and shapes. Of course, the typical Bochum-weather did not bother to show us any blue sky, but boy, do those steam locomotives look beautiful in the rain. Three pairs of diesel and three pairs of steam locomotives participated in two rounds of parades throughout the day. Each pair shared performed similar duties for the Deutsche Reichsbahn and Deutsche Bundesbahn. First was a presentation in their individualit...

I went hiking in England in the past week. Although most of my intercity travel was made by coach bus (for budgetary and logistical reasons), being who I am, I still had to slip a train ride in there somewhere, didn't I. By Geof Sheppard - Own work , CC BY-SA 3.0 , Link What could be a more suitable way to end my hike than a train ride on the quaint and picturesque single track Tarka Line from Barnstaple to Exeter? In the gentle green hills of Devon, DMUs on this line traverse a scenic 40 miles along the Rivers Creedy, Yeo, and Taw. The Tarka Line got its name from Tarka the Otter , a local animal hero from a novel by the same name. It is part of what used to be the North Devon Railway between Bideford and Exeter. Today, the line terminates in Barnstaple . Barnstaple Station today consists of a sole platform and track. By Geni at the English language Wikipedia , CC BY-SA 3.0 , Link Barnstaple as a Junction Station in yesteryear. By Ben Brooksbank, CC BY-SA 2.0 , Li...

Although it is still premature to pop the champagne on the Brightline High Speed Rail between Orlando and Miami, this week marks a milestone in the history of this much-anticipated rail service. The first fully assembled trainset (two Siemens Charger locomotives plus four intermediate cars) has arrived in South Florida, after a special transcontinental delivery from its birthplace of Sacramento, California. With the year 2017 looming around the corner, we can almost hear the "all aboard" call from Brightline's Phase One opening between Miami and West Palm Beach (Click here for more from the Railway Gazette). The second phase of the service, covering the rest of its length to Orlando, however, wanders in limbo. Once promised the funding of this rail service, the Government had pulled the rug from underneath. In the meantime, please enjoy these early footages of what I shall call the "Brightliner," and feel free to explore more about this project o...

I didn't have much time to write much this week as I just completed an almost-transcontinental move from Alberta back to my homeland of Ontario (over a distance of over 2 000 miles). I spent 3 days driving and 2 nights staying at campsites along the way. On the second night, I camped at the beautiful Neys Provincial Park on Lake Superior, somewhere along Highway 17 between Schreiber and White River (it's about a good 12 hour drive from the Toronto Area). The northern border of this park is defined by the right-of-way of the Canadian Pacific transcontinental mainline (well, yes, there's the possibility that you'll be woken up by a really long freight train snaking their way through). Anyway, the footage below was shot by a fellow camper at the park 2 years ago. Hope you enjoy it.

Remember the Flying Hamburger (or well, a better translation, Hamburg Flyer) I wrote about on this blog a while ago? The good ol' SVT 137 high speed articulated diesel multiple units from the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft  (German Imperial Railway) era? The trainset had also been used for an international service called the, Berolina, introduced in 1959 between Berlin and Warsaw. They weren't replaced by locomotive-hauled trains until the 1970s. Given the trainset was designed in the 1930s, that was quite the life it had. Anyway, I found some more old footages of the trainset on YouTube. The second video on this page is a documentary on how the SVT 137 was made in the factory. It's in German but it's quite entertaining to watch.

We are going Polish this week again, since we have so little exposure on that part of the world regarding their railroad equipment (I mean honestly, until I started looking for things to fill this blog with, I didn't even know they made locomotives and trainsets). So the feature this week comes from the same manufacture that has been gaining some more attention in recent time. This locomotive has also been on display at the InnoTrans in Berlin, it's called the Gama from Polish builder Pesa. According to the Polish Wikipedia page of this locomotive (thank goodness for Google Translate), the Gama has quite a few variants, which makes me think that this locomotive is still work in progress. Nonetheless, it's interesting to see different manufactures coming up with their own designs. In the most part, the Gama is a pretty standard product you'd get from builders today. I'll leave it up to you to have a look at the locomotive's official site on their market...

I missed a week and I'm late for this week... I would've been fired if I was writing for somebody else... Anyway. I was traveling a little, in a big metropolis, but believe or not, I didn't have reliable internet access because of a few hiccups here and there. Anyway. There is some big changes coming up in my life, and I think I might do a few things differently here. So yeah, this week's blog has pretty much pictures and a few words descriptions only. On a foggy day, in front of Toronto Union Station on the renovated Front Street On the right is the former Canadian Pacific Royal York Hotel. Now a Fairmount property The front of Toronto Union Station This is looking east, with the gold plated Royal Bank of Canada buildings in the center Looking out the window of my intercity train, a GO commuter train in the recently updated new color scheme This is the AMT Roxboro-Pierefonds station in Montreal. This is the only electric commuter rail in Ca...

This week, I'll post about a locomotive that's quite close to our everyday life in North America. We are no stranger to AC locomotives, and certain freight roads have been mass-adopting them since their introduction. For an adhesion limited tonnage railroad, one needs as much tractive effort as possible for trains to achieve their desired performance, be it steep grades and/or tonnage limits. Locomotives with AC traction motors satisfy exactly those requirements ( here 's a page on why). On top of the superior tractive effort than DC units, AC motors don't suffer stall burns and require less maintenance because they have fewer contacting moving parts. Of course, with the advantages comes the added cost of purchasing an AC locomotive, and some railroads aren't doing that because DC units suffice in their operating environments. This brings us to the locomotive I'm writing about today, the ES44C4. " Memphis National Train Day 2013.1 (8874348877) " b...

Okay I'm not gonna drop the ball again this week, so I'll start early (FYI it's 30 May right now). Diesel-electric locomotives (or really, diesel locomotives in general) are somewhat of a rare breed in countries like Japan where railroads mass-electrified right after the steam era. Japan does keep a fleet of diesel locomotives/MUs for areas that are less densely populated, but the vast majority of them are of the diesel-hydraulic type. " JNR DF50 65 DF50 1 hikyou go kawaguchi " by Spaceaero2 - Own work . Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons . So let me get right to the chase then. The Class DF50, unlike most Japanese diesels, is indeed a diesel-electric. 138 of this class of locomotives were jointly built by a number of builders (many of which still exist today) starting between 1957 and 1963. They were operated by the JNR up until 1983. The locomotives were built in two batches, the first of which by Kisha, Nippon Sharyo, and Mitsubishi ...

This week I want to direct your attention to a well preserved and fully operational Victorian railway line in the North of England. As you'd imagined, it's frequently visited by steam excursions. " Steam locomotive 60163 Tornado LNER Peppercorn A1 class Ribblehead Viaduct The waverley 3 October 2009 image 1 " by Ultra7 - Own work . Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons . I had the fortune to have traveled on this line while I last visited England and I wrote about the equipment that could be seen around this line (see my posts on the Class 158 and the Class 332/3 ). This post, however, is for the railway line itself only. " High Scale, Garsdale - geograph.org.uk - 606499 " by Don Burgess. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons . " Lunds Viaduct - geograph.org.uk - 163936 " by John Illingworth. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons . Since the Wikipedia , as well as its own dedicated website have ...

In this really uninformative post, you'll see some pictures and perhaps a YouTube video of a locomotive that totally looks like Bender from the show Futurama . Czech Raildays 2012, ČD 754, 754 021-4 (02) “ od Radim Holiš, Wikimedia Commons. Licencováno pod CC BY-SA 3.0 cz via Wikimedia Commons . Apparently it's called the Class 754 from the Czech Railways and the Slovak Railways (or Class T 478.4 back when the two were the same country). According to Wikipedia this locomotive is nicknamed Goggles locally. 754.012, Valašské Meziříčí “ od Matijak – Vlastní dílo . Licencováno pod CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons . I don't find much detail online (well, okay, I haven't really looked hard enough this time either, but I just think it's funny to feature Bender on my blog). But you can look up the basic stuff here on Wikipedia.

Back in the days before General Electric got big into building locomotives, there was this famous company called American Locomotive Company, or Alco. Similar to today's major builders, their locomotive also sold across the globe. Right, my title gave it away. This post is about an Indian locomotive designed and first by Alco in 1962. Starting in 1964, India produced this locomotive domestically at the Indian Railways' very own Diesel Locomotive Works. " Indian diesel loco WDM2 " by Miya.m - Miya.m's file. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons . Started life as the DL560C, 40 units of this Alco and 40 EMD SD24 were produced in America and shipped to India for trials. Compared to the SD24, the DL560C was deemed more reliable and rugged. With the added benefit of a technology transfer agreement from Alco for domestic production and simple maintenance, India went big on the DL560C, known there as the WDM-2 (wide gauge, diesel, mixed use). More than ...

There isn't really too much to say this week, so I'll let Wikipedia, some pictures (from Wikimedia Commons), and a hella cool and old-school video (or at least part of it, from YouTube) do most of the talking. So I was looking at early high-speed trains for something ever-so-slightly worked related the other day, and I came across this funky looking, Burlington Zephyr equivalent streamliner from the 1930s in Germany. Now this is way before the DB days, and the trainset was built by some company that's been gone for a while as well (however, here 's a little Wikipedia history lesson of it if it fancies you). So retro and futuristic at the same time Hail, preservation! So the culprit of this week (I'll lump the prototype and production trains together), at least the very first set of it, is apparently called the Flying Hamburger if you do a literal translation of its name. This trainset ( SVT 877 for prototype, SVT 137 for production sets) was developed ...

I'm kind of sure I've posted about the airport rail link in Toronto at some point, but I can't find it through searching my blog. Oh well. Even if I wrote about it before I wouldn't have had a lot of information. So I don't think it hurts to mention it again. As its name suggests, the Union Pearson Express, or UP Express (except UP doesn't stand for Union Pacific), is the express rail service between Toronto Union Station and Pearson International Airport. This service is scheduled to inaugurate prior to the 2015 Pan Am Games. The UP Express will traverse a distance of 15.5 miles, most of which along the GO Kitchener Line trackage. A new, 2.1 mile, Airport Spur was constructed to connect the GO Train tracks to the airport. Trains will run every 15 minutes and it takes 25 minutes to complete the journey. There are two stops en route, one at Bloor-Dundas, where subway connection is provided, the other at Weston GO Station. Initially, service will be operated by ...

So I've been doing some more railroad browsing on the website, and this is the one of the news/rumor I've stumbled upon lately (it's actually 7 December today as I'm writing this... but I think I'll still stick to my weekly schedule and post this whenever this is supposed to be published). Some time ago I posted about the Pacer used on brand lines in the North of England. It's a 2-car DMU with 4 steel wheels attached to each car that's based on the body of a Leyland bus. I've ridden them for hours at a time during my trips to England, and to be honest, they are loud, rattly, the ride is really crappy. They've been in service for quite a number of years now. Recently, certain people have started asking about replacement. In an effort to save money, one party has proposed something rather quite interesting, which is to take the retired D78 Stock from London Underground, sling a diesel engine under the floor, hook it up to a generator so it can powe...

Recently, one of the two types of the much anticipated InterCity Programme trainsets, ones to replace the current InterCity 125 and 225 trainsets on British Rail was finally unveiled by Hitachi and the DfT. While detailed information on the inter-web is still scarce for this train, here are some links to news articles and official websites of the Class 800 electro-diesel trainset. Hopefully more on this trainset will emerge soon. Hitachi Class 800 trainsets begin testing in Japan First Hitachi Class 800 trainset unveiled Hitachi Press Release on the Class 800 Google search results on keywords "Hitachi Class 800"

So the InnoTrans has come and gone for another round. I haven't been in person. My plans to go this year had been prematurely derailed by certain circumstances. Not to worry though, there is still time, I keep telling myself and 2016 is just around the corner that's not terribly far from now. One of the locomotives exhibited this year was the British Rail Class 68 locomotive. Since the dismantling of the British Rail Engineering Limited as part of the Thatcher Privatization, British locomotives have gone the way of the dodo bird. Indeed, the Class 68 is German (but built in Spain). She belongs to the Vossloh Eurolight family and is dubbed UK Light. This locomotive looks pretty "out there". Not bad at all. Traditionally Vossloh in Spain have used EMD engines. This time around it's not very far off either and the Class 68 is said to come with a 3 800 horsepower Cat C175-16 engine. Electrical components, however, are sourced from ABB rather than EMD. This...