Prague to Humenne (Part 2)
I actually got round to finishing off part 2 of the “Night Train” video…
Skoda S190E
Skoda-109e
I was hoping to see this new loco before leaving Czech Republic; sadly it was not to be. However, I happily read that the first demo unit has been shown to the public and was exhibited at Innotrans 2008, held in Berlin. Whilst there have been arguments as to whether or not this was a huge waste of money, the fact that it was devloped and built by Skoda in Plzen demonstrates their tradition of building locos is still going strong and, hopefully, they will be able to compete with the German, French and other loco offerings. I wish them luck, seeing Skoda built locos going past the apartment in Prague every day for two years you develop a soft spot for them (especially the double decker City Elefants).
Double-headers
For reasons I haven’t quite figured out, there seems to be a considerable number of double-header freights trains passing by all the time - we live close enough to see plenty of freight trains passing. Other than the obvious under-powered reasons, most of these double-headers and ‘bankers‘ - you have one at the back pushing. Sometimes the formation is a coupled bank engine, othertimes they are uncoupled; The tracks have little or no gradient to bother the hauling loco, even in the surrounding area. So the only plausible explanation is simply too many underpowered locos
Praha - Bechovice
Shameless self-promotion of a misspent hour on Saturday
I must admit that this if my first, somewhat wobbly, attempt at YouTubing. Normally I would prefer to take photos, however, this time I thought I’d give this youtube thing a go. It is not an outstanding piece of video capture but then not much is on YouTube; but this is what it is all about, sharing the moment, and enjoying yourself; probably.
Track layer
There is an incredible amount of engineering works currently happening in and around Prague. The major developments in Prague are the building of a two core tunnel to Prague’s main station - that will allow faster and higher volumes of traffic from the East and North - plus the rebuilding of Prague main station. The results are certainly an improvement (smoother rails), but we are also getting to see a fair amount of engineering related traffic. This weekend I finally managed to get out and take some photos from my local station; this track laying truck-train was maneuvering itself to be disassembled after the weekend’s work. Interesting to actually see these things working, it is quite simply a large Tatra truck on rails with all but the front tyres on the track.
EMU Class 451
Some of these decaying EMUs (Electric Multiple Unit) have been repainted/re-branded; other than the fact that there are not enough of the double deckers to completely replace the old stock, some of these units are being re-built rather than being scrapped en-masse. These units are nothing more than bone shakers that have been in the (long) process of being phased out; they were quite radical for the time and still have a certain 60’s design flair to them. I have been trying to get a photo for some time of the re-spray, they do look good and probably the ride has been changed as a part of the re-build. A more graceful retirement.Condemned coach
It would be unfair to say that all of Czech Railways coaches should be condemned since that would cast the net far too wide. It would be fair to say that the majority of coaches should be condemned, however, and if you believe the news items they soon will be.
Interestingly I have noticed that they are making huge efforts to ‘tart’ up their loco fleets, by this I mean a new paint job and generally keeping the locos clean. Talking of which, Czech Railways has split its Cargo division out into a separate entity. The upshot of this is a new logo (you just about make out the logo on the side of the loco above - click to enlarge), and a new paint job matching the branding scheme. Must admit the new colours make the locos really stand out and are better than the all-reds of DB and OBB.
I found an article showing off the new CD Cargo logo
Prague Airport
My first comment will be at least you can easily get to and from the airport. Its not perfect, but then I tried many times with JFK (NY) and can only delight in the relative ease of using the bus getting to Prague’s airport.
Do you need to get from Prague Airport to the center of the city? Currently
you can either wait for a bus or take a taxi and hope you wouldn’t fall
victim to Prague’s notorious taxi drivers. Now it seems that in the
future, traveling from the airport may be quite a different story.
-
Radio.cz
