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...

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...

Last week, I linked a couple of clips that I posted on Instagram from the Fototag at the local museum. I actually have more footage, and I briefly patched them together in iMovie, and here it is, in one video.

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...

Let me come back to my own side of the pond for now and write about a locomotive in the warm parts of the continents. The slight mystery surrounding them intrigues me a little, but I'm sure it's nothing a seasoned railfan can't educate me on. I shall begin by talking a little about the previous life or lives of what are known today as the MP32PH-Q. Unlike its brethren MPXpress locomotives, it is a direct re-iteration of its ancestors from MPI's Morrison-Knudsen days. By Artystyk386 - Own work , CC BY-SA 3.0 , Link When MK Rail was still a thing, they were known for rebuilding locomotives of other origins. Many transit agencies enlisted their service to provide spin-offs of the proven EMD GP38 and GP40 locomotives. Known as the GP40WH-2 in their previous life under MARC (Maryland Area Regional Commuter), the MP32PH-Q already packed lots of mileage hauling passengers under their belt. These days, they work down south, serving in Florida and soaking up all the ...

Beautifully made videos by  TheKnaeggebrot  in stunning Southern Bavaria Aha, it's that time of the week, and I haven't forgotten about this blog this time around (which is a little sad, really). Let me bring your attention to the DB Class 111 , another locomotive from the Deutsche Bundesbahn days. It seems to be making a comeback? (Not sure if that's really the case, but there seems to be more and more of them on RegionalExpress trains around the area I live in, and even on some S-Bahn trains). By Lars Steffens - Flickr : Baureihe 111 , CC BY-SA 2.0 , Link Built from the mid-70s, throughout to the mid-80s, the Class 111 was originally designed for regional trains and the then new S-Bahn Rhein-Ruhr. Capability for InterCity service was added in the early 1980s, with an increase of maximum permissible speed from 93 to 100 mph. Like many locomotives of the same era, the Class 111 was built by a consortium of builders, consisting of Krauss-Maffei, Henschel, Krupp, S...

The Class 120 is an inconspicuous looking locomotive (in today's standard, anyway). It occasionally, casually drifts across the rails right in front of my eyes, almost blending into the background, hardly noticeable at all. I would've probably have never thought much of it, until now. The amount of information the English Wikipedia page has provided is a bit of a pity. Luckily, though, it is 2017, and there's Google Translate (well, hopefully at least one version of me in some alternate universe is actually learning German). There is no way this post can contain (nor should it) all the wealth of information found on the locomotive's German Wikipedia page. Here, I'll just show off a few what I think are highlights. Von Benedikt Dohmen ( User:Benedictus ), Archiv-Nr. 63/28 - Eigenes Werk , CC BY-SA 3.0 , Link So beneath the underwhelming looks of the Class 120 is one of the first production three-phase AC locomotives equipped with regenerative braking. It w...

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...

The train of this week is a modern electric passenger locomotive from Russia. It's called EP20 and it's the product of a collective effort between Alstom and CJSC Transmashholding , the largest Russian locomotive builder. You may remember this locomotive from recent news, because it's featured in some of the photographs in the articles on the commencing of Talgo sets on the Russian Railways (RZD). " 2 EP20 na Rostov Glavny " by Gwinogradow - Own work . Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons . Unlike the other European passenger locomotives, the EP20 has six axles, and uses somewhat of an unusual axle arrangement. Instead of using two 3-axle trucks, the EP20 has three 2-axle trucks (i.e. B-B-B). Locomotives like this do exist; they are just rarely seen outside of, say, Japan. " Фирменный поезд "Буревестник" " by Айнар - http://www.train-photo.ru/details.php?image_id=142288&mode=search . Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via W...

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 ...

This week I feel like blogging about a locomotive from a lesser-known manufacturer in this part of the world. It's especially worth mentioning that this locomotive has recently been added to DB's procurement list to power push-pull DB Region trainsets. „ Lokomotiva 109 E2 “ od Škoda Transportation – http://www.skoda.cz/cs/press-room/fotogalerie/ . Licencováno pod CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons . So the Škoda 109E locomotive, or whichever railroad classification number you may want to call it (it's aka the DB Class 102 in Germany), is quite standard in terms of her specifications go. There are four axles, each powered by a traction motor pumping out about 2 150 horsepower, and the top speed in service is 124 mph. „ Brno, hlavní nádraží, lokomotiva 380.007 (03) “ od Harold – Vlastní dílo . Licencováno pod CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons . Enjoy the pictures and the quite beautifully made YouTube video (you've gotta see this one). I actually quite like ...

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 ...

So remember two weeks ago I posted about the German-Chinese electric passenger locomotive that's based on the Siemens EuroSprinter? Well, this week I'm going to post about a cousin of hers, another German-Chinese locomotive that's based on the Bombardier Traxx series, a family of locomotives also vastly popular in Continental Europe. Not too bad looking heh Oh, by the way, before I write any further, the naming convention that's worked thus far with new Chinese locomotives built from imported technology goes like so: HXD + digit + letter. HXD for electric locomotives, 1 denotes Siemens EuroSprinter; 2 denotes Alstom Prima; 3 is a little iffy. The very first HXD3 is a Toshiba, but the subsequent ones are apparently all Bombardier Traxx as far as I can tell. The last letter obviously just denotes the variant of the family. The whole scheme isn't entirely too confusing. As far as specifications go, the HXD3D is pretty much identical with the HXD1D. Both locomot...

So this week we'll go across the Pacific instead and have a look at a passenger locomotive developed by the Chinese that's based on a popular Germany family of locomotives. China has apparently bought the technology to Siemens EuroSprinter and Bombardier TRAXX along with thousands of heavy-haul freight locomotives from Germany and they have been busy developing with the technology ever since. Is it just me or does it look German? So this locomotive, the HXD1D is a 6-axle locomotive designed to haul long distance passenger trains on China's existing railroad network (I'm guessing since Chinese passenger trains are long, around 20 cars, they need a bit of tractive effort with all the available horsepower and hence 6 axles). The latest government directive apparently dropped the maximum operating speed on existing railroads from 124 mph (or 200 km/h) down to 99 mph (160 km/h) and that's how fast this locomotive is supposed to go. Interestingly the locomotive ...

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...

New equipment in North America is, in general, harder to come by than the rest of the world where rail is a primary mode of public transportation. Therefore I have no excuse to not mention any new comers onto North American rails. This week I'll write about a new commuter locomotive by Wabtec for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, she is called the HSP46. Unlike the MPExpress Series locomotives that can be seen across the continent by now, Wabtec has partnered up with General Electric in the case of the HSP46. Instead of the EMD 710, we have here a 12 cylinder GEVO engine at the heart of the HSP 46 that also supplies Head End Power. Four AC traction motors will take this puppy up to a top speed of 110 mph. This locomotive is also kind of a feather weight compared to her freight hauling siblings, coming in at only 287 500 lbs, 1 500 lbs more than a fully loaded standard 100 ton freight car. Not a bad looking loco at all really The paint scheme of the HSP46 co...

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...