While I am not completely sold on the aesthetics of some of these locomotives, they all seem to have interesting looking details in too many ways to count. They certainly have some unusual features in the truck designs. Some have perforated wheel webs.
At 2:50 and 3:00, there are a couple of mysterious, and seemingly Alco inspired road switchers. At the end of the video they run past again slowly and show a good close-up detail of the trucks, revealing quite a collection of springs, shock absorbers, and equalizers. The larger one appears to have a D-D wheel arrangement with some type of self-steering truck feature.
That is a neat display. I like the “whitewall tires” and the perforated wheels. My favorite is the center cab switcher. I am a sucker for those (thanks LIONEL). [;)]
Yes, Alco and Baldwin lines of the 40’s and 50’s at those two locations in the video. But what was more intriguing was the proliferation of 6 wheel trucks…mostly I assume C’s but B trucks on twin units. The dual power were also interesting. It would appear they have a locomotive, electric or diesel or dual, for any and every application. I am sure the US would reject them as being too light a gauge to fit North American Standards, but they do look hefty enough just the same. I would presume the twin units with B trucks are for where power is needed but track won’t take C loads…fascinating how far along others are in adapting to different applications of railroading…
… it’s akin to dreams I’ve had of standing by a crossing and seeing an endless line of every locomotive I’ve ever heard of roll by, in pristene condition!
I am not sure about their basic capacities and train tonnage. I think those are both less than North American standards, but their gage is five feet. They do seem to run fairly long freight trains that appear to have rather high tonnage levels. With a larger gage than the U.S., I don’t see why their tonnages and car capacities would be less. Might as well put those extra 3-1/2 inches of gage to work. The cars don’t appear to be smaller than in the U.S. I believe the couplers they use are the SA3 coupler. Here is a link to information about them:
The 2 unit, Natural Gas fueled Gas Turbine Electric locomotive is most impressive (it appears at about the 6 minute,28 second mark in the video).
It’s also interesting that while the Russians favor the European style,short nosed forward cab style for their mainline locomotives(Diesels, Electrics and the Gas turbine), it would appear (I’m assuming the locomotives shown are mostly current production) that they still use high,short hoods on their road switcher style diesels…
"The Russian SA3 is just a copy of the American “Willison” which is already used (in a smaller size) on Queensland sugar trains. The Willison is a later design than the Janney but I wouldn’t have thought 100 years later. The Russians had adopted it shortly after the second world war, and I assume it had been around since the late 1910/early 1920 period at least, while use of the Janney dates from the 1880s or so.
The technical difference is that the Janney relies on the moving “knuckle” to take the coupling loads, while the Willison interlocks the coupler castings themselves, the two heads being held in place by spring loaded “plungers” which move aside to allow coupling or uncoupling but lock the coupled heads in place in normal coupled operation.
This of course removes any risk of a broken knuckle, but the interlocking sections of the casting might fail under shock loading, and replacement of the coupler casting might be more costly than replacing a knuckle in an otherwise undamaged coupler.
In the original design, the Janney knuckle relied on the pin on which it rotated to take the coupler loads, but current designs allow these loads to be taken by interlockiing sections of the coupler and knuckle castings.
There was a set of small scale working models of Willison couplers at QR’s Ipswich Shops in 1972 and I was told that QR had seriously considered using them during the 1950s instead of the Janney type actually adopted.
Great video, Gee, seems strange to see that there are actual railroads in the world other than North America, hmmmm. And does anyone know what that monster orange thing is at 4:14 on the video, this is one huge machine, maybe we should be buying locomotives from our Soviet brothers.