Train of the Week

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...

Between the Internet and the LKAB presentation at the Heavy Haul Conference in Calgary some five years ago, I've become no stranger to these iron ore trains of the Arctic Circle. I was quite excited to see a big train again It has been a while since I last laid my eyes on some AAR 100-ton trucks, although they were surrounded by otherwise unfamiliar equipment. Photos don't do the IORE justice when it comes to their incredible might. In person, they, even with just a single section, almost in a weird way, look really long. The City of Kiruna itself feels like a deja vu. Snow and mountains in the backdrop, fatally frigid temperatures, sizable, heavy freight trains, and a passenger depot that was moved out of the city centre (although for different reasons than we are used to in our neck of the woods), to the yard at the edge of town. Fortunately, Kiruna isn't very big. It takes less than half an hour to complete a leisurely walk downtown, and there is a bus that...

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.

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 ...

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 ...

This week, I'll pick up from  where I've previously left off on the showcase for locomotives we, North American railfans, may not realize that we already know. These are primarily EMD locomotives built by foreign builders under license. Some of them we might recognize from their styling, some we could not dare to guess. So if you haven't heard of this locomotive already, let me introduce you the Swedish built Danish EMD diesel-electric locomotive, the DSB Class MZ, known to EMD as the J30C-2. Can't really say there's too much of the GM resemblance is there? Unfortunately I couldn't find much info in any language on the web (thank Google Translate for when I can), this will be one of those brief posts. However we do know that there are 4 variants of the Class MZ simply denoted by I to IV. They were built chronologically over a period of approximately 11 years from 1967 (around the time of the famous SD40). One would imagine that some of the evolut...

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...

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!

All right, another week just flew by. Let me go back to an EMD again this Friday and write about this flavor of the SD70 locomotive, expertly crafted upside-down in London, Ontario, for the State of New South Wales in Australia. The long hood does have some family resemblance, but what's up with the old school trucks? Locally she's known as the 90 Class. To those of us from the Northern Hemisphere, she's called the GT46CWM (somehow people really like the number 46, it must mean something, I just can't figure out what). Well, actually, most of the locomotives of this class were built properly in London, except for the last 4 units, which were built by EDi in Upside-down Cardiff (to distinguish from The Cardiff). Bruce. For Australia, the 90 Class is a heavy locomotive and only works in coal service in NSW. She weighs in at about 364 000 lbs. and pump out the standard 4 000 horsepower.

Oops I forgot to update this blog didn't I. Well, here's a little post about one of the newest members of the EMD family featuring the vastly successful 710 family of engines. Oh and by the way, if you don't know this already, traditionally EMD has named its engines by cylinder displacement (this doesn't apply to the metric H-engine), therefore 710 engines have 710 cubic inch displacement cylinders (yup, it's big enough for my head to fit into). A repowered GP9 demonstrator with her 8 cyl. 710 engine drawn on the side So far, Canadian Pacific is the only user of this little EMD (well, really Caterpillar now, but what the hell). The GP20C-Eco isn't built as an entirely new locomotive in the traditional sense. They are what's called re-manufactured locos. The buyer sends older generation GP locomotives to Caterpillar, depending on the specific model, certain parts are retained, and the rest are built from scratch. In CP's case, the GP20s used GP9 ...

Well, this is one of those weeks where I can't really think of what to write and therefore have to pick something out of the blue. The world of trains is one where the more one looks the more she or he finds. It continues to amaze me how many variations of the same vehicle designed to operate on top of two steel rails there are in different corners of the Planet Earth. Today we look at a locomotive from the JNR days So I will briefly write about a Japanese electric locomotive from the mid 20th century. The Class EF58 locomotive is a joint product by 5 companies, 4 of which are still quite well known today (and they are Hitachi, Toshiba, Kawasaki, and Mitsubishi). She was built between 1946 and 1958, during the golden days of the North American Streamliners. A picture of the EF58 from the 1980s If you remember, Japan's national railroad network, until the days of the bullet train, was entirely cape gauge (42 inches). The EF58 has 8 axles, however only 4 center axle...

North America has always been at the forefront of diesel traction in railroad heavy haul freight service. Although not heaviest in tonnage and not fastest in speed, our freight railroad system is balanced with longevity, interchangeability, and most importantly, service affordability. Today though, I will write about a locomotive in a state-owned and operated heavy haul system where technological prominence is placed at a higher priority. The HXD1 is the first of the massive numbers of European electric locomotives China Railways has ordered in the early 2000s. Her primary assignment is the 10,000 tonne high speed coal trains on the Daqin Railroad . The looks of the HXD1 show traces of the EuroSprinter The HXD1 is an 8-axle electric locomotive with 2 permanently coupled sections. The locomotive is based on the Siemens EuroSprinter , and is built by Chinese manufacture CSR Zhuzhou under license. The HXD1 combines some of the best Europe and North America can offer. Wit...

Why not keep the SD40 theme of late going again. I like looking up different locomotives all over the world and have them turn up being something familiar. I guess it just goes to show that although we have a long way to catch to the rest of the world in passenger rail due to certain lifestyle choices, but we are still quite influential in the freight world of things. It’s indeed somewhat difficult to go around the world and not find American Locomotive Company and General Motors locomotives in one form or another. So the SD40 of this week is a derivation of the SD40-2, known as the British Rail Class 59, aka JT26CW-SS by EMD. She’s got a low and narrow car body with a control cab at each end. A 16-645E3C sits at heart. Purchased by Mendip Rail in 1984, the Class 59 was the first American locomotive and first privately owned locomotive to command freight trains on the British mainlines. The locomotive proved very effective and reliable, about 10 years after Mendip Rail’s order, Natio...

I'm gonna write about this CL class from the former Commonwealth Railways of Australia. It is a very interesting locomotive, especially to those of us in North America, where the legendary bulldog nose on the F and E Units can only be found in nostalgia. The CL Class, still in service today, is the latest General Motors locomotive to feature that beautiful, streamlined, and timeless nose design. Bulldog nose and porthole windows, what a classic design Mechanically, the CL Class was an General Motors SD40, with all the parts we knew and were familiar with, when it was first designed and manufactured in the late 1960s and early 1970s by Clyde Engineering of Australia. This class of locomotives was operated from coast to coast between Sydney and Perth, Adelaide and Darwin by Commonwealth Railways and its successor Australian National. On the side, I have a theory on why the CL class is named CL class. There is this other locomotive introduced in Australia by the Western Austra...

I feel like writing about a little 6-axle Anglo French electric locomotive this week. By little I really only mean in physical dimensions, however, this locomotive is more powerful than any diesel in service in North America right now. She is used in transporting goods (or in freight train service I should say) domestically in Great Britain and through the Channel Tunnel between Great Britain and Europe. This locomotive is classified as the Class 92 in Britain and CC 92000 in France by the SNCF. The Class 92 is quite a modern looking locomotive The locomotive is jointly developed by Swiss company ABB and Britain's own Brush Traction. Since the Class 92 predates the High Speed 1 and has been built between 1993 and 1996, they have to have both a pantograph and the ability to draw current from the third rail DC system in the South of England. Due to the difference in electrical supply system, the maximum power developed by this locomotive differ. On top...

Last week, we've identified the Janney coupler and briefly looked at its elegant design. This week, let's, again, very briefly, look at the different types of Janney coupler that are widely used today. I will only talk about the head of the coupler, and ignore anything that the general public may need to trespass onto railroad property and get in a unsafe situation in order to have a good look at. As far as coupler heads are concerned, there are 3 types in used today. Type E, F, and H. Types E and F are used on freight, and H used on passenger equipment. Since the withdrawal of passenger service in North America by private railroads, the Type H standard is no longer maintained by the Association of American Railroads, a trade group formed of major freight railroads, but is under the control of the APTA, the American Public Transportation Association. Now let me introduce another term, slack. Slack is an allowed gap between two coupled up couplers. In other words, when most ...