News and information about railroads in Iraq
The Middleton Railway in Leeds has this model of a 2-8-4T steam locomotive supplied to the Iraq Petroleum Co by Hudswell Clarke. This model was displayed in the entrance to Hudswell Clarke’s offices.
There are rumours that one of these engines (No.2) had survived in Iraq, and may even still exist, possibly near Kirkuk… does anyone know more?
David Argent has built an O-scale model of one of the three PC class streamlined pacific locomotives supplied to Iraq by Robert Stephenson & Hawthorns in 1941. There was a fourth, 504 Kirkuk, but the ship was sunk en route.
Wikipedia has a lot of information on them. A very detailed article on the locos appeared in Railway Gazette in 1941.
RMweb has some discussion of models which could be used to represent Iraqi Republic Railways locos.
Three or four years ago I went to a model railway show in Sutton, south London, where someone was selling imported Czech resin bodyshells for building models of various Czech(-oslovakian) locomotives. At least one of the bodies on show was suitable for an Iraqi loco – perhaps a T669. Unfortunately I didn’t buy one at the time, and I didn’t take the details of where they were made and who imported them. Does this sound familar to anyone? I could be tempted to acquire one now if anyone knows who the supplier is!
Anyway, an RMweb poster called Fosterboy
has identified some possible candidates for conversion into models of IRR locos.
IRR DEM2200 loco.
Piko SNCF BB 567590 model.
IRR DEM2700 loco
Bachmann Chinese DF4D model
IRR DEM2800 I think you need the cabs of ??? and the body of ???
Unfortunately the links from RMweb to the Roco website have got mangled, and I can’t figure out a way to reverse engineer them, but this class has been described as “the body of a TE109, the front ends of a M62 and the roof fixtures of a 2TE121”, which could help pin down suitable models (why are so many model manufacturers’ websites so appallingly bad?).
The DES3100 is available as a brass kit
DK-Model brass T669 locomotive kit
More suggestions would be very welcome!