The Rail Enthusiast thread

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Cycleops

Legendary Member
Location
Accra, Ghana
View attachment 659645

.... and the winner of today's ugliest train goes to no. 2809 🏆
It's going to be a hard fight against a Czech 'Goggles' diesel

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Juan Kog

permanently grumpy
View attachment 659645

.... and the winner of today's ugliest train goes to no. 2809 🏆
Not Ugly it’s Functional. ^_^
 

Cycleops

Legendary Member
Location
Accra, Ghana
I do love some of these European locomotives. One of my favourites is a M62 'Taigatrommel' a Russian build machine that was used in Soviet block counties as well as exported to North Korea, Cuba and Mongolia.

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It has a certain brutal charm about it. I have a lovely Roco HO model of it with sound. A fabulous runner and weighs a ton.
Sounds like a bag of nails which I guess is to be expected:


View: https://youtu.be/-2puGq5_1QU
 
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rogerzilla

Legendary Member
There's one left at the East Lancs Railway but it doesn't have an engine in it at the moment. The Australians managed to get the notorious Crossley HST V8 to work reliably where BR couldn't. Apparently the Oz engineers made literally hundreds of their own changes to it over the years, having purchased far too many to write off the cost. Anyway, the knowledge is out there.
 
There's currently a bit of a stir amongst German railway enthusiasts because a maintenance company in Rhineland Pfalz has chartered a steam locomotive to move ballast trains; apparently it takes spent ballast out in the morning, and hauls 1000t of fresh ballast and new track to the building site in the evening.



Germany is a fascinating country sometimes; we're all high tech and focussed on economics and then someone does something like this.

Apparently there isn't a diesel locomotive available. I can't quite believe that as they have the whole of Europe to hire from, so I'm interpreting it to mean there isn't a diesel available at an economic price. Even that's a bit odd but what do I know? it's a rural, even quire remote region and if diesels are in as short supply as staff there could be a bottleneck.
 
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rogerzilla

Legendary Member
Where does Germany get lump coal? AIUI the only remaining mines, apart from one in Wales that has months to go before closure, are in Russia (so that's out), Kazakhstan, and Colombia.

There is no shortage of the stuff underground but demand is very low.
 

Cycleops

Legendary Member
Location
Accra, Ghana
Yes, I was reading that the steam preservation lines in UK have to buy coal from Peru or some other strange faraway place.
 
Where does Germany get lump coal? AIUI the only remaining mines, apart from one in Wales that has months to go before closure, are in Russia (so that's out), Kazakhstan, and Colombia.

There is no shortage of the stuff underground but demand is very low.

I wondered that too, especially as this isn't a preservation operation and has to make a profit. I'd have thought the coal cost alone would be prohibitive.
 

rogerzilla

Legendary Member
Unusual to have all the controls labelled (Tornado is like that too). Usually means it's used by several different railways.
 
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