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Preserved Steam in Mongolia |
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For earlier pictures see Torsten Scheider's report. John Middleton has been working in Mongolia and has sent the following report: In June 2014 Mongolian Railways celebrated 65 years existence (but the significance of 65 is not known - seems a bit arbitrary), anyway, it was a good excuse for a locomotive parade at the station of which I was given a short video by the Depot Engineer - this included (in exhibition finish) veteran TE2-418, DASH7-001, 2M62M-032 and M62UM-002, all working. It is not known where TE2-418 had come from but is apparently now somewhere in the south of the Country. However, it seems that L-3634 was brought down from Russia for both the parade and filming. Strangely L-3634 does NOT appear in the parade on the video but there are two short clips of it working the train. Staff at the depot said it was used for filming then sent back - what a waste of enthusiast potential !!!!!! John has sent these two stills of the event from the "Mongolian Railways Publicity Video" he was given, in those circumstances I doubt there is a copyright issue:
Was this the first steam working in Mongolia since 1961 (when regular steam finished according to MTZ) ???. Although it seems that L-3634 returned to Russia (Ulan Ude?) after the event, as part of the celebrations L-3167 (with plates Kolomna 15382/1954) was plinthed at Ulan Bataar Station on 6 June 2014.
The video included some interesting archive footage showing Class O, Ye and SO steam locos in operation but also a double headed train hauled by TE1 locos, one of which was numbered M-1216 (which throws up even more questions about the M 1200 series of numbers, also used for TEM2). The numbering of the steam and diesel locomotives displayed outside the MTZ depot in Ulaan
Bataar is weird and since I first saw the locos in 2000, some have been renumbered!
"Su-116" carries plate Kolomna 7218 of 1935 on the dome, it is believed to actually be Su 208-88 (September 2005 and October 2010 pictures)
"YeL-266" is actually Yea 3030 and carries plates ALCO 72222/1944 and USATC 6269 (September 2005 and October 2010 pictures)
750 mm gauge 159-469 seems to have been repainted during 2014 and now carries just the number T-159. It carries plates Podolski 0469/1937 (October 2010 picture)
"Tem1-168" is NOT a Tem1 class but a Te1-20 and is believed to actually be Te1-20-011, it carries a Kharkov 1948 plate (Tem1's were only built from 1958 onwards) (October 2010 picture)
"Te2-522" was previously displayed as Te2-508 with section numbers 1015 and 1016. Sometime between 2005-2010 the section numbers were removed and it was renumbered Te2-522 (September 2005 and October 2010 pictures)
Half of twin-section 2M62M-043 is believed to be correctly numbered, it carries a Lugansk 5583/1986 plate and was plinthed after 2005, it does not carry an A or B section designation.
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