Innholdsfortegnelse for October - November 2023 i Locomotives International

There are two excellent books entitled “Extreme Steam” [1] and “21st Century Extreme Steam” [2], These books focus on extremely cold conditions of winters in parts of China. However, “Extreme Steam” can refer to parameters in addition to very cold weather. What follows are just your author’s personal experiences. He most sincerely hopes that readers will not take this article as a “didn’t I do well”, - it is meant only as a simple expansion of the theme of “Extreme Steam”. Almost certainly, many readers will have experienced conditions and places well beyond those mentioned below. Temperature By contrast to the very cold conditions and heavy freights described in the books mentioned above, a French heritage line - “Train á Vapeur des Cévennes” was visited in August 2003. The train…

Switzerland has been a tourist destination since tourism began, and one of the most popular places is Zermatt. Nestled in a bowl in the mountains, Zermatt would be liable to pollution from motor vehicles, and so it is totally car free, and to get there you must take the train. The metre gauge line runs from Brig to Visp, with main line connections at both places, then turns off to climb to Zermatt. It is 44 kms long, and spectacular. It was opened throughout in 1891. As the town welcomed increasing numbers of tourists, hotels were built, with probably the most successful being those built, and run, by the Seiler family. From Zermatt, another railway, the Gornergrat Bahn (still using three phase electricity today and with new trains since 2022…

Contributions for this section should be sent to the Editorial Office, with the following exceptions: • Southern Africa - John Middleton, do 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 Caries 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 ANGOLA / DR CONGO Lobito Atlantic Railway A passenger on a ROVOS train which traversed this line in July 2023 noted an overturned garratt at Lumeje station (formerly…

On the line to the Brocken, three of eleven daily trains were cancelled from mid July for the remaining period of the summer timetable due to shortage of staff. The services on the Harzquerbahn and the Selketalbahn were not affected. The Walpurgis celebrations were held again this year in Schierke on 30th April after a break during the pandemic. The club IG Harzer Schmalspurbahn ran its Walpurgis special with 99 7247. This train departed at Wernigerode at 5pm and returned from Schierke two hours after midnight. Four members of the club dressed up as witches and devils rode in front of the smokebox and on the water tanks of the locomotive. Most of the passengers in the coaches wore similar costumes. On 27th July, 99 6001 (2-6-2) returned from works…

Introduction La Trochita, (El Viejo Expreso Patagónico), is a 750 mm (2 ft 5 in) narrow gauge railway in Patagonia, Argentina using steam locomotives. It is also known as the Old Patagonian Express, arguably the slowest express in the world. The nickname La Trochita means literally “little gauge” though it is sometimes translated as “The Little Narrow Gauge”. The railway is 402 km in length and runs through the foothills of the Andes between Esquel and El Maitén in Chubut Province and Ingeniero Jacobacci in Río Negro Province. Originally it was part of Ferrocarriles Patagónicos, a network of railways in southern Argentina. Nowadays, with its original character largely unchanged, it operates as a heritage railway and was made internationally famous by the 1978 Paul Theroux book The Old Patagonian Express,…

There are a number of railway and tram museums in Japan representing the country’s diverse and interesting transport history. I was fortunate enough to spend two weeks in Japan in November 2018 and visited several museums during my trip. The Railway Museum The Railway Museum is located at Ōmiya in the city of Saitama, which is about half an hour from Tokyo by bullet train. The museum opened in 2007, replacing a smaller museum in Tokyo, and is operated by the East Japan Railway Culture Foundation. The museum has an excellent viewing area on the roof of the museum, with views of the Tohoku high-speed line as well as the Takasaki commuter line. The main hall houses a large collection locomotives and rolling stock. In the grounds of the museum…

Victoria Falls is a border city made famous by its location at the waterfall of the cascading River Zambezi, dropping over the 108 metre drop in to the deep Zambezi River gorge. Combined with this is an architectural masterpiece, the single arch roadrail girder bridge spanning the gorge, so close to the waterfall you can get sprayed with water mist. An awe inspiring location. Rail traffic is now in July 2023 again buoyant, post covid. A Zambian Company named Bushtracks, set up to accommodate the tourist trade to the falls from both sides of the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia, run smart wine and dine trains down to the Victoria Falls Bridge for sunset arrival with a steam locomotive. A UK 1953 built Garratt Class14A No. 523, is the train…

Sarkad is a small village near Bekescsaba close to the border with Romania. In 1912 a sugar factory was built at Sarkad, it was called “Sarkadi Cukorgyar” (Sarkad Sugar Factory). It once had a 760 mm gauge railway network on which sugar beet was brought in from the fields for processing. This system closed in the 1960s. But the factory was also served by a standard gauge industrial line which was connected to the Bekescsaba Salonta (Romania) railway line at Sarkad station. Sarkad sugar factory owned four standard gauge steam locomotives. The first one, numbered SC 1, was ex-MAV 369.011 (StEG 1595/1881, 0-6-0T), which was aquired in 1924. It was withdrawn in 1961 and subsequently scrapped. SC 2 (0-6-0T, OK 2912/1908) was built to the Prussian T3 design and was…

Reading the fine print of the 1977 Thomas Cook International Timetable after consuming sausage and chips and a couple of beers led to dire consequences halfway through the Dover Ostend crossing. Fortunately the ghastly sensations ceased once dry land was under foot and Bob and I were able to savour the excitement of a train journey to behind the Iron Curtain. There was no steam to keep us awake in our couchettes but the frequent border inspections did the job until Berlin Friedrichstrasse was reached in a freezing grey dawn redolent of Cold War spy thrillers. We couldn’t get out of the station until our passports had been very thoroughly inspected and even then we were instructed to take our documents to police headquarters at Alexanderplatz for further examination. There…

A visit to the Tyrol of Austria during August 2023 found three narrow gauge railways running scheduled steam services. Jenbach is some 130km to the south of Munich. Here railways of three different gauges meet. The main line is the Austrian Federal Railways standard gauge line from Innsbruck to Salzburg. The other two are narrow gauge lines which terminate here at separate but closely adjacent stations. On the north side is the metre gauge Achenseebahn which opened in 1889. In 2020 the railway operating company became bankrupt and in 2022 it came under the control of the Zillertalbahn. Since then prospects have improved with four serviceable locomotives and trains packed with tourists. The line climbs 440m over a distance of almost 7km to Seespitz on the shores of the Achensee…