The Canadian

Posted on 17 June 2011 by Andrew Grantham

Crossing Canada on VIA Rail’s The Canadian Toronto – Vancouver train service in June 2004, and continuing on to Vancouver Island.

Lugagge for The Canadian service being loaded (or unloaded) at Jasper station, 21 June 2004.

The VIA Rail train from Victoria waits at Courtenay before heading back south. The railway on Vancouver Island is very scenic, but only had one daily passenger train each way. 23 June 2004.

Victoria station, at the south end of the Vancouver Island line. 23 June 2004.

Railways in the United Arab Emirates

Posted on 17 June 2011 by Andrew Grantham

The UAE is another country which might be thought to have had no railways before the metro and monorail were built in Dubai. However there were some lines.

[Photo of train in Dubai. Thomas Kautzor]

Dubai

Thomas Kautzor went in search of railways in Dubai’s parks on 25-27 November 2004, and kindly supplied these photos (© Thomas Kautzor, 2004.)

Mushrif Park

Mushrif Park is the largest of the four parks and consists mainly of scrubland. There is a plinthed standard gauge train on a short section of track alongside a concrete platform, with a plaque saying OLD MUSHRIF PARK TRAIN (1975).

A four-wheel Baguley-Drewry diesel locomotive is accompanied by two wooden-bodied four-wheel coaches, all painted in blue. The coaches are built on the frames of goods wagons, are braked and have builder’s plates reading BUTTERLEY Co. Ltd. 1968, Builders Codnor Park, Nottingham.

[Photo of train in Dubai. Thomas Kautzor]

History

Eljas Pölhö and the Halcrow website provide some details of the railway.

By the late 1960s Dubai’s growing trade meant a new and modern port was needed, as large ships could only approach to a mile from the shore. Work was underway in 1967, with Sir William Halcrow & Partners as consulting engineers and Costain Civil Engineering Ltd as contractor.

The breakwaters for the port were composed of rock brought by road from Bayadat Quarry, some 20 miles inland, and then transferred to a standard gauge railway at a large construction yard adjacent to the future port’s site. When the breakwaters were completed in 1971 the track was lifted and all rolling stock stored in an adjacent plant yard.

Halcrow has some archive film of the railway in action in 1970 on its website. See the Port Rashid, Dubai video, from about 09:11 onwards.

The port opened in 1972, named after Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai.

Further extensions of the breakwaters were commenced in late 1975, but this time road vehicles were used for all transportation of materials.

Fleet

Costain International had five locomotives, Baguley-Drewry 3655-3657 of 1968 (numbered L1 to L3, new to Costain International) and RH 418595 of 1957 and 418599 of 1958 (L4 and L5, previously used in three other locations). They had also 18 flat wagons, built by Butterley Co Ltd, Codnor Park Works.

The preserved locomotive is the former L1. Before being plinthed it was used from December 1975 to 1981 in Musrif National Park, an irrigated oasis 12 km east along the main road from the international airport. The park was opened by the ruler of Dubai in December 1975, together with the half-mile long railway which was built by Costain International Ltd who presented one locomotive and two flat wagons converted to passenger coaches.

The line was to be extended to form a loop, but this never happened and it was abandoned by 1981.

L4 and L5 were scrapped in Dubai about September 1975.

L2 and L3 were stored in Costain’s plant yard in 1981. In 1983 they were dumped amongst other disused plant at Bayadat Quarry, in the desert about 30 km out of Dubai on the Al Ain road, shortly before the Jebel Ali-Hatta crossroads. They were disposed of along with other machinery sometime between March 1987 and 1991.

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Safa Park

At Safa Park Thomas Kautzor found a 60 cm (see below) gauge railway loop with a station/shelter at one end and a tunnel at the other. Inside the tunnel was a derailed train consisting of one steam-outline diesel locomotive (2’B no.115) and two bogie open coaches (15 seats each).

Given the condition of the track, this railway seemed not to have operated for quite some time.

Another report says a 381 mm (15 in) gauge miniature railway was in operation in 1981 in a park in the western suburbs of Dubai – could this be the same thing?

Road trains

As well as ‘proper’ trains, there are rubber-tyred road trains in the parks at

Al Mamzar Beach Park, Hamroya
Creekside Park, near Dubai Courts
Mushrif Park, Al Rashidiya
Safa Park, Jumeira

Abu Dhabi

Khalifa Park

“A miniature railway offers regular train tours” in Khalifa Park in Abu Dhabi. I visited Abu Dhabi in 2011, but didn’t get the chance to investigate further.

Sources

The information on this page is mostly assembled from postings to the World Diesel Loco mailing list by Richard Bowen, Thomas Kautzor, Daniel Osborne and Eljas Pölhö. Their quoted sources are

Industrial Railway Record 72 (1977), p74-76: The Railways of Dubai by W.F. Simms (includes two photos)
Continental Railway Journal 48 (1981), p356
Continental Railway Journal 53 (1983), p114
Continental Railway Journal 48 (1991), p493

Czech railways in 2003

Posted on 24 February 2011 by Andrew Grantham

In October 2003 I spent a week in the Czech Republic, touring the Czech rail network, and sampling the odd local beer or four.

Railbus 810 055-4 was part of the stock of the 12.36 from Marianske Lazne to Karlovy Vary dolni, where it is seen shortly after arriving at around 14.14 on 2003-10-05.

Electric multiple-unit 451 068-1 stands at Praha hlavni with service Os 9143, the 11.23 to Benesov u Prahy, on 2003-10-06. Despite the impressive front end the train was a bit grotty inside.

The 120th anniversary of the Krupa – Kolesovice line was celebrated on 4th and 5th October 2003. Steam loco 434.2186 hauled a Praha Masarykovo – Kladno – Luzna train, which connected with a Luzna – Krupa – Kolesovice special pulled by 434.1100, seen above running round the train at Kolesovice. Preserved railcar M131.1130 was also in operation.
Details from Rinbad.

A very dead kettle in the railway museum at Luzna.

Preserved loco in the Luzna museum. Only the front of it has been restored – inside the shed, some of the wheels are missing!

A train for Tabor leaves Bechyne, over the impressive concrete viaduct which is shared with road traffic.

A Bechyne-bound train passing our train for Tabor. There are some more photos of this rather nice line on a 100th anniversary website.

Diesel loco leaving at Jindrichuv Hradec on the 760 mm gauge JHMD line to Obratan.

Narrow gauge military railway in York

Posted on 24 February 2011 by Andrew Grantham

The remains of a short 18-inch (or thereabouts; I didn’t actually measure it) railway are visible by the River Ouse on the south edge of York, just upstream from the Millennium Bridge.

Here are some photos I took on April 19 2003.

[Photo of narrow gauge railway by Rive Ouse in York]

The line ran through a now-blocked gateway in the wall.

A nearby noticeboard explains:

Military stores were unloaded at an Ordnance Wharf, built in 1888, and taken to the army depot in Hospital Fields Road on a narrow gauge railway, a small section of which is still visible at the southern end of New Walk. Explosives were brought in the schooner ‘Princess’ known locally as the ‘Powder boat’.

There is a set of points, and then both tracks turn left to run parallel to the river. The Millennium Bridge is in the background.

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All changed from Limerick Junction

Posted on 1 November 2010 by Andrew Grantham

Train at Galway station

“O Paddy dear, and did ye hear
The news that’s going round?”

The tunes whistled by old men on the next row of seats haven’t changed since I first encountered Iarnród Éireann a dozen or so years ago, but everything else at Ireland’s national railway has. Dirty diesel locomotives hauling old coaches with even more ancient passengers have gone, and in their place is this Dublin to Cork inter- city train of South Korean-built coaches packed with passengers drinking lattes as they tap away at laptops.

The reason for my return visit was the reopening at the end of March 2010 of the 58 km line from Ennis to Athenry. Known as the Western Rail Corridor, this creates a link between Limerick and Galway, and as such is almost unique as a route which doesn’t radiate from Dublin (Limerick Junction – Waterford has three trains a day). The line had retained some freight after the end of passenger services in 1976, but closed when this disappeared.

There aren’t many countries reopening rural lines, but the Irish government is trying to spread development, tackling fears that the entire working population might decided to move to Dublin. The €106·5m revival will increase options for commuting into Limerick and Galway, where traffic is now a growing problem, and further stations are planned to serve housing which is springing up.

A ticket for the two-hour journey costs €20. “A return is cheaper than a single”, advises the lady in the ticket office. Leaving Limerick every seat was taken, though few passengers went all the way through. There was quite a cross-section on board, from shrieking teenagers to pensioners, and a smartly dressed young couple, her carrying bags from fashion shops, him reading, of all things, Railway Modeller.

While it is literally true to describe the lines as an inter-city route, this wouldn’t reflect the reality of five trains a day, operated by two-car DMUs. Horses, sheep and goats observe the train from small fields divided by low stone walls, an enormous bull eyes us over his fence, and herons, rabbits or deer are never out of sight.

In the 1980s Ireland’s railways had been allowed to decay, and things came to a head with an accident in 1997. The perhaps surprising decision was taken to modernise rather than simply give up, just as the “Celtic tiger” economic boom and European Union money arrived. The results have been dramatic. It is easy to get sentimental about the old days of loco haulage and semaphore signals, but IÉ has modernised quickly and seems to be doing a more useful, if less picturesque, job than it once was.

The newly reopened stations look strongly built in concrete and steel, almost too industrial for a landscape of ruins and standing stones. New concrete bridges have replaced level crossings where possible, else modern barriers have been installed.

The line opens up new views. “I’ve never seen Gort from this side before” someone comments as we pause for a southbound train to pass. Looking at the state of a back garden I think the owner must have believed no-one ever would.

The connection to the Dublin – Galway main line at Athenry faces towards Dublin, and so the driver changes ends to take us into the terminus. Planning has begun to reopen the next 25 km to Tuam next year and 27 km to Claremorris some time after that, while the 74 km trackbed to Collooney is to be protected for a possible Sligo service.

Tied to a lamppost at Athenry is a sign from a local group which lobbied for the reopening of the railway. It simply says “welcome back”.