Innholdsfortegnelse for June - July 2024 i Locomotives International

This article is based upon the ‘Indian Magic’ Tour organised by Darjeeling Tours in January 2024. It also draws on comparisons with my only previous trip to India in the autumn of 1986. Indian Railways in 1986 was a mixture of Broad, Metre & Narrow Gauges with the BG being heavily dieselised / electrified, whilst the MG & NG were a mixture of steam & diesel. In 2024 most of the MG has been converted to BG and most of the NG has either been similarly converted or closed. The main lines are now largely electrified and are a very modern railway with significant flows of block freight trains including double-stack container trains ‘under the wires’. There were numerous places where the tracks were being upgraded and new high-speed lines…

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 NEW ZEALAND IMPORTS Various social media pages have reported on the shipment of up to 10 former Kiwi Rail locomotives to Africa at the end of April / beginning…

Introduction Having long followed the export of ex-BR class 86, 87 and 92 electric locomotives and recently inspired by Chris Bailey’s “Railways of Bulgaria” (incidentally published by Mainline & Maritime) I had been looking for an opportunity to visit Bulgaria. A multi-day rail tour featuring a variety of ex-BR traction was advertised and I, along with a couple of friends booked with enthusiasm only for the tour to be cancelled due to a lack of interest. Having taken a bet by booking cheap flights before the tour was confirmed we decided to go ahead with our flights to Sofia. While we had no firm itinerary, we knew we wanted to experience the Rhodope Narrow Gauge Railway (Bulgaria’s only operational narrow-gauge line) and visit the Black Sea ports of Burgas and…

This article updates and adds to the information previously published in Locomotives International 142 following a visit to the country in early September 2023, during which we were fortunate to be able to visit six surviving peat railways. Latvia is a country of 64,589 km2 (24,938 miles2), about one third the size of UK but with a population of only 1.9 million and formerly a Soviet satellite until it regained independence in 1991. Peat bogs are one of Latvia's greatest natural resources covering more than 10.7% of the country and with reserves of over 11.3 billion m3. There are more than 100 active peat bogs and peat extraction plays an important role in the national economy; in 2022, export value of peat was €294 million. Currently extraction takes place in…

The day started by being picked up by coach at 06.35 from the Pease Pottage Services on the M23 and then travelling to the Channel Tunnel to go to Calais. From the back of Calais we took the E15/A26 route south to junction 4 where we went cross country to La Coupole. La Coupole is now a museum of great significance to the development of rocket technology and space travel, a far cry from railways! The massive dome 72 metres in diameter and 5.5 metres thick was constructed by the Nazis in 1943-44 as a means of assembling V2 rockets and launching them at London. Fortunately the site was put out of action by the Allied Forces in summer 1944, but the technology it was linked to ultimately went on…

In May 1998 I chased the Railway Touring Company's specials around Sardinia for a week. We travelled with the group from Gatwick to Olbia and back, and rented a brand new white (!) Renault 1800 for the week. If Avis had known what was in store, I would have been shown the door! A 3-hour late arrival meant the 40 miles to our first stop, Palau, were made in darkness; this was my first experience of driving on Italian roads. Being the sole driver/linguist/map reader of we three, this was one of the most difficult weeks of my life. I made a video film in conjunction with one of the colleagues in the car, and with a passenger on the trains who filmed run pasts where there were no roads.…

The Rio Turbio Railway or Ramal Ferro Industrial de Río Turbio (RFIRT) was a 255 km (158 mi) 750 mm gauge railway which was built in the early 1950s, crossing Patagonia in order to haul coal from Argentina's only coal mine at Rio Turbio to the port of Rio Gallegos for ongoing transportation by ship to Buenos Aires where it was used to generate electricity. 850,000 tons of coal were transported each year in the line’s heyday in the mid 1960s. The railroad itself was quite unique. While a narrow gauge line it operated more like a main line coal hauling line as would be seen around the world today. Unit trains of coal up to 2,000 tons were hauled by single steam locomotives that weighed only 48 tons. The…

Steam locomotive operations will be revived in West Malaysia after a hiatus of over 30 years. Great Leisure Heritage Rail (GLHR), a company owned by DS Rail Mobility, a local locomotive manufacturing company, is embarking on a massive undertaking: the restoration of steam locomotive 562.04 'Dungun'. Built in 1939 by the North British Locomotive Works of Glasgow, Scotland, she served the Federated Malay States Railway and later, their successor Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTMB) as a member of the 66-strong O class Pacific locomotives. They were primarily used on the railway’s top link mail and express trains, their sheer power and speed making them popular with crews and enthusiasts alike. Sadly, in the 1970s, ‘Dungun’ was withdrawn from service and put on static display, first at Butterworth railway station, and later,…