The South African Railways Class 6E1, Series 11 of 1984 was an electric locomotive.
In 1984 and 1985, the South African Railways placed forty-five Class 6E1, electric locomotives with a Bo-Bo wheel arrangement in mainline service.South African Railways Index and Diagrams Electric and Diesel Locomotives, 610mm and 1065mm Gauges, Ref LXD 14/1/100/20, 28 January 1975, as amended
Manufacturer The 3 kV DC Class 6E1, Series 11 electric locomotive was designed and built for the South African Railways (SAR) by Union Carriage & Wagon (UCW) in Nigel, Transvaal. The electrical equipment was supplied by the General Electric Company (GEC).
Forty-five locomotives were delivered in 1984 and 1985, numbered in the range from E2141 to E2185. These were the last Class 6E1 locomotives to be built. Like Series 6 to 10, the Series 11 units were equipped with AEI-283AY traction motors. UCW did not allocate builder's numbers to the locomotives it built for the SAR, but used the SAR unit numbers for their record keeping.
Characteristics Orientation These dual cab locomotives had a roof access ladder on one side only, just to the right of the cab access door. The roof access ladder end was marked as the no. 2 end. A corridor along the centre of the unit connected the cabs which were identical apart from the fact that the handbrake was located in cab 2. A pantograph hook stick was stowed in a tube mounted below the lower edge of the locomotive body on the roof access ladder side. The locomotive had one square and two rectangular access panels along the lower half of the body and a large hatch door on the roof access ladder side, and only one square access panel and a large hatch door on the opposite side.
Series identifying features The Class 6E1 was produced in eleven series over a period of nearly sixteen years. While some of the Class 6E1 series are visually indistinguishable from their predecessors or successors, some externally visible changes did occur over the years.
Series 8 and later locomotives could be distinguished from all older models by the large hatch door on each side, below the second small window to the right of the side door on the roof access ladder side and below the first window immediately to the right of the door on the other side.
The Series 9 to Series 11 locomotives were visually indistinguishable from each other, but could be distinguished from all earlier models by the rainwater drainage holes on their lower sides. These holes were usually covered by so-called buckets, but the covers were absent on several locomotives. Another distinction was the end doors which were recessed into the doorframes on Series 9 to Series 11 locomotives, compared to earlier models which had their end doors flush with the doorframes. In addition, on Series 9 and later models the split side window on the driver's assistant side was replaced by a single rectangular side window with rounded corners. Finally, unlike all earlier models, all four doors on Series 9 to Series 11 locomotives had rounded corners.18-050 (ex Series 9 E2013) with recessed end door and rounded door corners
Crew access The Class 5E, 5E1, 6E and earlier 6E1 locomotives were notoriously difficult to enter from ground level since their lever-style door handles were at waist level when standing inside the cab. This made it impossible to open the door from outside without first climbing up high enough to reach the door handle while hanging on to the side handrails with one hand only. Crews therefore often chose to leave the doors ajar when parking and exiting the locomotives.E1882 with high mounted door handle
Side doors with two interconnected latch handles on the outside, such as those which were introduced on the Class 7E1 with one outside handle mounted near floor level and the other at mid-door level, were also introduced on Class 6E1 locomotives, beginning with Series 9.18-253 (ex Series 9 E2058) with two door handles
Service The Class 6E1 family saw service all over both 3 kV DC mainline and branch line networks, the smaller Cape Western mainline between Cape Town and Beaufort West and the larger network which covers portions of the Northern Cape, the Free State, Natal, Gauteng, North West and Mpumalanga.Railways of Southern Africa Locomotive Guide, 2002 Edition, (Compiled by John N. Middleton), p57, as amended by Combined Amendment List 4, January 2009
Rebuilding to Class 18E
In 2000 Spoornet began a project to rebuild Series 2 to 11 Class 6E1 locomotives to Class 18E, Series 1 and Series 2 at the Transnet Rail Engineering (TRE) workshops at Koedoespoort. In the process the cab at the no. 1 end was stripped of all controls and the driver's front and side windows were blanked off to have a toilet installed, thereby forfeiting the locomotive's bi-directional ability.Information gathered from the rebuild files of individual locomotives at Transnet Rail Engineering's Koedoespoort shops, or obtained from John Middleton as well as several Transnet employees
Since the driving cab's noise level had to be below 85 decibels, cab 2 was selected as the Class 18E driving cab primarily based on its lower noise level compared to cab 1, which was closer and more exposed to the compressor's noise and vibration. Another factor was the closer proximity of cab 2 to the low voltage switch panel. The fact that the handbrake was located in cab 2 was not a deciding factor, but was considered an additional benefit.
While the earlier Class 6E1, Series 2 to 7 locomotives had been built with a brake system which consisted of various valves connected to each other with pipes, commonly referred to as a "bicycle frame" brake system, the Class 6E1, Series 8 to 11 locomotives were built with an air-operated equipment frame brake system, commonly referred to as a brake rack. Since the design of the rebuilt Class 18E locomotives included the same brake rack, the rebuilding project was begun with the newer series 8 to 11 locomotives to reduce the overall cost of rebuilding.
The Class 6E1, Series 11 locomotives which were used in this project were all rebuilt to Class 18E, Series 1 locomotives. All forty-five Series 11 locomotives were rebuilt by April 2005. The numbers and renumbering details of the rebuilt units are listed in the table.Information gathered from the rebuild files of individual locomotives at Transnet Rail Engineering's Koedoespoort shops +Class 6E1, Series 11 units rebuilt to Class 18ECount6E1no.Yearbuilt18Eno.18EseriesYearrebuiltNotes1 E21411984 18-1171 2004 2 E21421984 18-1111 2004 3 E21431984 18-1541 2004 4 E21441984 18-0051 2001 5 E21451984 18-1481 2004 6 E21461984 18-1161 2004 7 E21471984 18-1361 2004 8 E21481984 18-1451 2004 9 E21491984 18-0681 2002 10 E21501984 18-0031 2001 11 E21511984 18-1191 2004 12 E21521984 18-0911 2003 13 E21531984 18-0751 2003 14 E21541984 18-0921 2003 15 E21551984 18-1051 2003 16 E21561984 18-1251 2004 17 E21571984 18-0311 2002 18 E21581984 18-1011 2003 19 E21591984 18-1621 2005 20 E21601984 18-1501 2004 21 E21611984 18-1521 2004 22 E21621984 18-0711 2003 23 E21631984 18-0951 2003 24 E21641984 18-1121 2004 25 E21651985 18-0381 2002 26 E21661985 18-0071 2001 27 E21671985 18-0171 2002 28 E21681985 18-1711 2005 29 E21691985 18-1731 2005 30 E21701985 18-1101 2004 31 E21711985 18-1681 2004 32 E21721985 18-1291 2004 33 E21731985 18-1091 2004 34 E21741985 18-1061 2003 35 E21751985 18-0981 2003 36 E21761985 18-1201 2004 37 E21771985 18-1721 2005 38 E21781985 18-1401 2004 39 E21791985 18-1701 2005 40 E21801985 18-0481 2002 41 E21811985 18-1571 2004 42 E21821985 18-1181 2004 43 E21831985 18-0661 2003 44 E21841985 18-0831 2003 45 E21851985 18-1461 2004
Liveries All the Class 6E1, Series 11 locomotives were delivered in the SAR red oxide livery with signal red cowcatchers, yellow whiskers and with the number plates on the sides mounted on three-stripe yellow wings.Soul of A Railway, System 7, Western Transvaal, based in Johannesburg, Part 9. South-Eastwards as far as Volksrust (2nd part) by Les Pivnic. Caption 4. (Accessed on 11 April 2017)
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