Innholdsfortegnelse for August - September 2021 i Locomotives International

MY TIME IN RHODESIA & BOTSWANA by Mike Lane All photographs by the Author On 28.12.72 I arrived in South Africa, after a two week journey from Southampton to Cape Town on the Transvaal Castle a Union Castle Liner. My travels started with a circular tour of South Africa and then I hitched from Cape Town, arriving at Beitbridge in Rhodesia on 26.3.1973. My last lift was from Pretoria, in South Africa, to Salisbury with a young South African on his way to join the Rhodesian army. It was a two day drive staying overnight in a motel at Beitbridge. I had relations living in Salisbury, my uncle and two male cousins, but I had no idea of their address, only a post office box number. I went to the…

NSWGR AD60 CLASS BEYER-GARRATT LOCOS by Trevor Heath Grahame Stanley (RIP) In February 1949, the New South Wales Government Railway (NSWGR) placed an order subject to contract and final pricing for 25 of a planned total order of 60, 4-8-4 + 4-8-4 Beyer Garratt steam locomotives numbered 6001 to 6025 (Order number 11155) from the British company Beyer - Peacock. The actual unit cost agreed to is not recorded in the Beyer-Peacock records. (On reflection it is assumed that pricing was very closely held information due to competition with other builders and, for other business reasons.) It is recorded however, that it took most of 1949 to sort out the cost, sign a contract and pay the required 20% deposit of 230,000 GBP (which gives a clue to the base…

ARCHIVE FOURSOME: NARROW GAUGE IN MORAVIA by Keith Chester All photographs by the Author…

READERS’ REPORTS Contributions for this section should be sent to the Editorial Office, with the following exceptions: • Southern Africa - John Middleton, c/o Editorial Office. Email: johnmiddleton3401@gmail.com• South America - Lionel Price, 9, Liverpool Road West, Oswestry, Shropshire, SY11 1PE. Email: jldprice@btinternet.com• Spain & Portugal - Joan Carles Salmerón, c/o Editorial Office. Email: cet@terminus.cat Contributions which are primarily photographic in nature should all be sent to the Editorial Office to give the best choice of material for covers etc. Similarly historical articles and features should be sent to the Editor. The Editor’s contact details are inside the front cover. AFRICA SOUTH AFRICA Steam Heritage Operations As South Africa slowly emerges from the pandemic, there has been a slow return of heritage rail activities. The Umgeni Steam Railway continues to…

JAMAICAN GOVERNMENT RAILWAYS No. 8 by Vic Allen In his book The Railways of Jamaica, published by Locomotives International (copies still available - Ed), Jim Horsford says that this locomotive, built by Nasmyth Wilson 1931, was plinthed in the Trench Town district of Kingston in 1966, “but its subsequent fate is not known”. Well, it is now! Earlier in the year, a friend sent me a newspaper cutting showing this engine, somewhat the worse for wear, surrounded by a group of people, many wearing “Kingston Creative” T-shirts. I made contact with Kingston Creative to find out what had happened to this locomotive, and almost immediately Trevor Spence, the CEO of the group restoring it, and working on other projects with Jamaican Government Railways, came back to me with a photograph…

BY TRAIN TO NIAGARA FALLS AND (NEARLY) BACK 1983 by Tim Edmonds All photographs by the Author In August 1983 I spent a week working at my employer’s HQ at Ann Arbor, Michigan, not far from Detroit. My wife had travelled with me for some sightseeing and our return flight to London was on Sunday evening so that we could fit in a short visit to Niagara Falls. A colleague in the US kindly used his contacts to book two nights for us at the Sheraton Brock hotel (a penthouse suite at the normal room rate!) and we also had the use of a company car until Sunday. We could travel by train from Windsor, just over the Detroit River in Ontario, Canada, and the early train back on Sunday…

UTSONOMIYA ‘LIGHTLINE’ TRAMS DELIVERED by Mike Bent Utsunomiya, population around 518 000, and the capital of Tochigi Prefecture, is the first Japanese city since the mid-1940s to undertake the construction of a completely new tramway network, as opposed to extending or modernising an existing one. Initial planning of an east-to-west light rail line, partly on an independent formation, and partly with street running, began in March 2013, with the Utsunomiya Light Rail Company Limited being founded on 6 November 2015, with a view to completing the tramway by 2019. However, in late 2016 it was reckoned that this target date was too optimistic. It was not until 20 March 2018 that the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism granted approval for construction of the line, with Tochigi prefecture also…

FROM ARCHANGELSK TO KUALA LUMPUR by Robert Humm Fragments of the history of the 0-6-6-0 compound Mallets built for the Yaroslavl-Vologda-Arkhangelsk Railway of Northern Russia are scattered among fifteen or twenty books, atlases, and magazines. It is the intention of this article to draw such material together and present as coherent a story as is possible at this distance in time. The well established Moscow-Yaroslavl Railway, at that time a private company, first extended its line northwards as far as Vologda in 1877. The territory was sparsely populated and the line was built cheaply on the 3ft 6ins/1067mm gauge. Commencing at the settlement of Uroch on the north bank of the River Volga opposite Yaroslavl, the new line was 203kms long and was connected to the main line only by…

THE ARICA TO LA PAZ RAILWAY REBUILDS FOR TOURISTS by Ian Thomson-Newman All photographs by the Author EFE’s distant relative. Chilean State Railways (EFE) operates passenger trains through a series of wholly-owned subsidiaries, one of which is the Ferrocarril de Arica a La Paz S.A. (FCALPSA), whilst freight trains are run by privately-owned concessionaires. The latter ply their trade between the Santiago-Valparaíso axis and Puerto Montt, 1 000 km further south. No concession has been let for running freight trains over (Chilean section of) the meter-gauged Arica to La Paz line (FCALP), which lies 1 600 airline kilómeters to the north of any other part of the EFE network, almost all of which is 1 676 mm gauged. EFE’s investment budget is financed by successive Three-Year plans, which are 99%…

CANFRANC REVIVAL by Mike Bent All photographs by Alfonso Marco Perez On March 27 1970 SNCF closed the railway which ascends from Oloron Ste. Marie to Canfranc, following the derailment of a runaway freight train near the Pont d’Estanguet, to the south of Bedous. Thus ended the first `life’ of the central Pyrenean railway, which had been completed only four decades earlier, inaugurated on July 11 1928. With traffic, both freight and passenger, being sparse and declining, SNCF decided to close the line south of Oloron, but leave the infrastructure, including catenary, energised at 1.5 kV DC, intact. On the Spanish side, between Canfranc, Jaca, Huesca and Zaragoza, the line remained open, both for passengers and freight. A bus service was provided linking Canfranc and Oloron Ste. Marie. Over the…

COACHES FOR THE WORLD 4: CRAVENS by Alon Siton All photographs from the Historical Railway Images Archive The Cravens Railway Carriage and Wagon Company was established in 1866 in the Darnall district of Sheffield, as a family business. Following a period of slow growth, in 1883 the Great Northern Railway ordered 400 sets of Cravens wheels and axles. In 1885 another large order arrived for forty composite coaches for use in the Manchester expresses, with several dining saloons and wagons. The North British Railway was sold 500 sets of wheels and axles and an order was received from the South Eastern railway for a hundred coaches. In 1919, the Clydebank-based marine engineering and shipbuilding firm of John Brown acquired an interest in Cravens until 1966, when Metropolitan-Cammell took over the…

THE LENNAKATTEN by Jonathan James All photographs by the Author Introduction The Uppsala - Lenna Jernväg (ULJ) is a preserved railway near Uppsala in Sweden. The 891mm gauge railway is a preserved section of the once extensive Roslagen network, which originally opened in 1876, but was reduced in size during the 1960/1970s. Another section is still in operation, providing narrow gauge commuter services from Stockholm. The ULJ (usually known as the Lennakatten Line) operates along 33km of the former network. The name Lennakatten (Lenna Kat) is believed to have originated from the nickname give to a steam coach bought in 1888, which made a hissing, cat like noise. Services operate between June and September, mainly at weekends, although there is also a service on Wednesdays and Thursdays during July and…

GISELABAHN AT CHRISTMAS by Phil Barnes All photographs by the Author One of the high lights of a coach tour holiday over Christmas 2004 was a one way trip on the ‘Giselabahn’ heritage train on Christmas Day. Our journey started at Kitzbuhel at 12.30 and continued to Fieberbrun where a pathing stop was made. After the pathing stop, the train then continued through the snow covered Austrian Alps until we reached at Leogang, where a photo-stop was made. Although our train was blocking the line, people were allowed off the train to photograph the front of the loco by going off the end of the platform. This controlled attitude did take account of health and safety but was not restrictive, especially as Leogang station had a wide central platform, thus…

AN ENDANGERED SPECIES by Ron Smith MFO – Bernhard Stuber Collection The railway preservation movement has saved a vast number of railway locomotives, coaches, wagons and other artefacts for future generations to enjoy. This includes the machines that have been saved by the national railway companies themselves. However, sometimes a special item may slip through the net. De4/5 no. 796 is one of these. Number 796 is the last survivor of a small series of motor baggage and passenger vans conceived in the 1920s. It should be preserved for future generations to see it, even though it is no longer in its original condition, and so, strictly speaking, does not fit the criteria for preservation that is used by national museums. These railcars were built for service on the newly…

HANOI TRAMWAYS IN 1901 by Paul Thompson This article combines a tram ride from the centre of Hanoi to the Tramways Factory (Usine des Tramways) illustrated by old postcards, a visit to the factory itself and a brief history of the Hanoi tramways. The visit to the factory took place in late 1901, around the time that the first two tramway lines opened. The Tram Ride: Our journey by tram to visit the Tramways Factory starts at the Square du Petit Lac, which is at the junction of Boulevard Francis Garnier (named after famed explorer of the Mekong River and military commander who was killed defending Hanoi against the Chinese in 1873) and Rue Paul Bert (named after the Resident General of Annam & Tonkin in the 1880s). The Square…

MAGNIFICENT MOUNTAINS by David Knapman All photographs by the Author…

BACK TRACK Polish Narrow Gauge, Issue 131 Robert Day writes: I visited the Gniezno and Smigiel lines in February 2011 as part of an organised tour facilitated by Howard Jones of the Wolsztyn Experience. The UK organiser has billed this as “Steam and Snow in Poland”, but snow was in short supply! Our trip to the Smigiel line was especially adventurous. Ownership of the line had just been transferred from SKPL (the Association of Local Railway Haulage) to the local council, and the noises coming from the council were distinctly mixed. (Subsequent events were not so good for the railway, though occasional heritage trains were run certainly up to 2016.) There was also some dispute over exactly who owned what. The upshot of this was that on the morning of…