Locomotives 162

Irish Railway Record Society

LOCOMOTIVES

121-Class Active 121-class locomotives 124+134 worked many freight and passenger services during the autumn and winter. On Friday 3 November, they worked the Limerick-Ennis portion of the 17:05 Dublin-Ennis with Mk III carriages.

141/181-Class Locomotives 159 and 186 were cut up in Inchicore in September. Locomotive 155 was stripped of useful parts in October, prior to being scrapped in late November. No. 176 was cut up in December. Locomotive 153 is out of use in Inchicore. The 121/14/181-class fleet is down to 33 locomotives to cover a roster requiring 27.

071-class In recent years, major overhauls had taken place only on the 201-class locomotives. With that programme now well advanced a number of the 071-fleet will receive major overhauls. In October, 081 entered Diesel 1 shop in Inchicore for major overhaul. Prior to that it was regularly used on the light Ballina branch trains (2 Cravens + GSV). In November, 082 was also brought into Diesel 1 for major overhaul.

201-class Overhauls continue in Inchicore with several locomotives being dealt simultaneously in Diesel 1 and the Ramps. The following locomotives were under overhaul on Monday 11 December: Diesel 2/Ramps 234, 227, 233, Diesel 1 081, 082, 233. No. 226 has had an additional guard grid fitted under the air reservoirs. Locomotive 233 has now been repainted into Enterprise livery, joining 206, 207, 8208, 209 and 230.

DIESEL RAILCARS

22000-Class (Rotem) The first two 3-car sets of InterCity railcars from Rotem/Mitsui/Tokyu were shipped from Korea in December and are due to arrive in Dublin in February. They will be transferred to Drogheda Railcar Depot on arrival. Both sets are from a batch of six fitted with NIR radio and signalling equipment i.e. NIR radio, AWS and TPWS, in addition to the IÉ train radio and CAWS system. Both 3-car and 6-car sets have been designated as the 22000-class.

Each car in a 3-car or 6-car railcar is equipped with an MTU traction engine driving a Voith hydraulic transmission. Unlike recent railcars delivered to IÉ they do not have an auxiliary engine and alternator set for light, heat and power, but have an alternator driven indirectly from the main engine via the Voith coupling. The bogie is built by Tokyu Car in Japan and is a modified version of the bogie under the 2800-class railcar, having additional dampers and anti-roll bars for the maximum speed of 160 km/hour (100-mph). On the cab cars, the engine drives the bogie farthest from the cab. One of the intermediate vehicles in a 6-car set and all cab cars are fitted with sand. This applies automatically for braking, but only in very limited conditions for traction purposes.

Passenger facilities include air conditioning (Toshiba), a mixture of bay and unidirectional facing seats, wheelchair spaces and toilets, standard toilets, sliding-plug power doors at the ends of the vehicles (Faiveley) as well as bicycle and luggage space. There is a catering vehicle and first class section located in one of the cab cars in each of the 6-car sets.

The railcars will undergo extensive commissioning and testing before entering service. They are likely to based in Limerick/Limerick Junction for this.

2600 and 2700-classes The ‘hybrid pair’, 2609+2716, remained out of use in Drogheda Depot and await clearance to commence trial running.Two-car set 2603/4 was used for gauge clearance trials Athlone-Westport-Ballina on Friday 3 November. It was then based in Ballina and used for driver and Nominated Person training until Tuesday 21 November when it worked the 13:00 Ballina-Manulla Junction. This was due to the failure of locomotive 071 on the Norfolk liner and its replacement by 074. Railcars were then restricted to operate between Ballina and Manulla Junction and empty Manulla-Athlone until further notice. Previously 2701/02 were used for gauge clearance trials on 30 May 1998. Set 2601/02 arrived on 19 December and took over Ballina branch duties from 2603/04 in early January.

DART

The first refurbished 2-car Linke-Hoffman-Busch 8100-class DART, set 8107, arrived in Dublin Port on Wednesday 18 October from Siemens in the Czech Republic . It was put on bogies in the former Coastal sidings on Alexandra Road Extension and hauled to Fairview by 185 on 19 October. The second set, 8113, was delivered to Dublin Port on Wednesday 1 November. Bogies were brought from Inchicore early the next morning and the process of putting the carriages on rails on the spur to the former Coastal Containers depot commenced at 07:00. Locomotive 151 departed with the set to Fairview depot at approximately 13:30. Testing of set 8107 to check against interference issues with the signalling system took place between Dun Laoghaire and Dalkey in December. This was done under a track possession at night. The set was towed to and from Fairview by another DART set.

The remainder of this article appears in IRRS Journal number 162, published February 2007.