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National Railway Museum

National Railway Museum
Prakash Tendulkar, San Jose, CA

 

Turn Table.jpg (47676 bytes)  Turn Table as seen in 2001.

WAG1.jpg (42414 bytes)  WAG1 #20710: Bidhan.

WAM1.jpg (40285 bytes)  WAM1: The 1st AC Electric Locomotive on the Indian Railways WAM1 20202 was dedicated to the service of the nation on the 1st January, 1959 by Shri Jagjivan Ram, the then Minister of Railways at Asansol Railway Station. This locomotive was aptly christened as "JAGJIVAN RAM". This event marked the beginning of 25 KV AC traction on the Indian Railway System. This 2840 HP electric locomotive was manufactured at Germany and imported at an approx. cost of Rs. 10 lakhs in the year 1958. It employed Ignitron type mercury arc rectifiers for converting AC to DC for powering its motors. This 74 ton locomotive worked at 100 KMPH and also hauled the Kalka-Howrah Mail Deluxe Express trains. At its mid-life rehabilitation stage, the locomotive was converted from mercury arc to silicon diode type rectifiers. (The 1st WAM1, according to Hugh Hughes' book, Indian Locomotives Part 4, and Jal Daboo's book, A Guide to Diesel & Electric Locomotives, is #20200).

WCG1.jpg (55358 bytes) 

WCG1: This DC electric locomotive was amongst the first lot of 41 electric locomotives to come to this country. It was christened Sir Leslie Wilson in the honor of the then Governor of Bombay. It was specially designed for goods operations and had a high tractive effort.

(WCG1 #20025 was named after Leslie Wilson, then Governor of Bombay. One at NRM is WCG1 20027. Another one at Kalyan Loco Shed also carries the same name, even though it is not 20025 either. So which one is real "Leslie Wilson"? NRM site also indicates that this loco is 650 HP. The fact is, this loco had four traction motors of 650 HP each, two under hood on each side.)

WCP2_1.jpg (68752 bytes) 

WCP1 Sir Roger Lumley: This DC locomotive has a rigid wheel base of only 2 driving wheels. The third wheel is articulated with the single carrying wheel. Each one is driven by a pair of motors which can be connected in various combinations to give 6 different speeds.

(This information is grossly incorrect. It is 2-C0-1 locomotive, as quoted in Hugh Hughes' book. Each driving axel was powered by two traction motors rated at 350 HP each. This loco at NRM is complete with traction motors and collapsible ladder near Asstt. Driver's door on -1 end. I could not check presence of instruments in driving cabs, though.  

More comments from Ian MacFarlane, a veteran rail fan and railway man from Australia, who is fully familiar with Indian Railways:

"On the CR ex-GIPR 2-Co-1, originally the EA-1 class. The confusion arises because there were three pre-production prototype electric Pacific engines, reflecting a mixture of both these wheelbase arrangements and a third, the symmetrical 2-Co-2, with test use of different flexible drives from paired dc electric motors to the three uncoupled wheel sets. The production engines #s 4004-24 and a later #4025 were all 2-Co-1, and as 4006 lies in that range it has to be a 2-Co-1 and not the oddball prototype. From my recollection of seeing the beast, it was a conventional rigid-chassis electric Pacific. My source of info on the prototypes was before I had read Hugh Hughes Part 1 on BG locos, 1851-1940, being a definitive French book on electric traction, Histoire de la Traction Electrique, Vol 1 (of 2 vols). The researchers on the loco side were Messieurs Yves Machfert-Tasserin, and the great Fernand Nouvion, both of whom I knew. The production electric passenger locos for the GIPR were DC, Metrovick equipped versions of the similar Swiss Federal Ae3/6 series I, also built by SLM at Winterthur. So while Hughes is wrong on not identifying one of the prototypes as a 2-Bo-A1 (I don't know which number), he is right in quoting the production locos as 2-Co-1 (or 1-Co-2, which is the same). In passing, the pioneer and short-lived NWR diesel-electric Mail Engines of 1935 were indeed 2-Bo-A1. Oddball configurations like this and electric and diesel electric locos built on rigid chassis were popular until powerful main line loco-sized traction motors were small enough to fit between the wheels, on a bogie under a highish-level, but still an essentially flat floor.")

WCP2_2.jpg (35069 bytes)  Another picture of the same loco.

WR35B_1.jpg (37572 bytes)  WR 1928 stock EMU motor Coach # 35B: This is one of the first coaches used for the EMU services in the Bombay suburban section of the Bombay Baroda & Central India Railway.

WR35B_2.jpg (36579 bytes)  Weather has taken a toll on the canvas on roof. One glass window is broken.

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