South African Class 10E1, Series 2 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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10-168 at Pyramid South, 22 September 2015 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Spoornet Class 10E1, Series 2 of 1990 is a South African electric locomotive.
Between 1990 and 1992, Spoornet placed fiftyClass 10E1, Series 2 electric locomotives with a Co-Co wheel arrangement in mainline service. [1]
Transnet Freight Rail is a South African rail transport company, formerly known as Spoornet. It was part of the South African Railways and Harbours Administration, a state-controlled organisation that employed hundreds of thousands of people for decades from the first half of the 20th century and was widely referred to by the initials SAR&H. Customer complaints about serious problems with Transnet Freight Rail's service were reported in 2010. Its head office is in Inyanda House in Parktown, Johannesburg.
The 3 kV DC Class 10E1, Series 2 electric locomotive was designed for the South African Railways (SAR) by the General Electric Company (GEC) and built by Union Carriage & Wagon (UCW) in Nigel, Transvaal. GEC supplied the electrical equipment while UCW was responsible for the mechanical components and assembly. [1] [2]
The General Electric Company, or GEC, was a major UK-based industrial conglomerate involved in consumer and defence electronics, communications, and engineering. The company was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
Union Carriage & Wagon (UCW) is a rolling stock manufacturer in South Africa.
UCW delivered fifty locomotives to Spoornet between 1990 and 1992, numbered in the range from 10-126 to 10-175. Contrary to prior UCW practice, GEC works numbers were allocated to the Class 10E1 locomotives. With the exception of the Class 9E, also a UCW-built GEC locomotive, UCW did not allocate builder’s numbers to previous locomotives it built for the SAR or Spoornet, but used the SAR or Spoornet unit numbers for their record keeping. [1] [3]
The Class 10E1 was introduced as a new standard 3 kV DC heavy goods locomotive. With a continuous power rating of 3,090 kilowatts (4,144 horsepower), four Class 10E1 units are capable of performing the same work as six Class 6E1 units. [4]
The entire Class 10E1 fleet features electronic chopper control, which is smoother in comparison to the rheostatic resistance control which was used in the Classes 1E to 6E1 electric locomotives. [5]
The locomotive makes use of either regenerative or rheostatic braking, as the situation demands. Both traction and electric braking power are continuously variable, with the electric braking optimised to such an extent that maximum use will be made of the regenerative braking capacity of the 3 kV DC network, with the ability to automatically change over to rheostatic braking whenever the overhead supply system becomes non-receptive. [4] [6]
Regenerative braking is an energy recovery mechanism which slows a vehicle or object by converting its kinetic energy into a form which can be either used immediately or stored until needed. In this mechanism, the electric motor uses the vehicle's momentum to recover energy that would be otherwise lost to the brake discs as heat. This contrasts with conventional braking systems, where the excess kinetic energy is converted to unwanted and wasted heat by friction in the brakes, or with dynamic brakes, where energy is recovered by using electric motors as generators but is immediately dissipated as heat in resistors. In addition to improving the overall efficiency of the vehicle, regeneration can greatly extend the life of the braking system as its parts do not wear as quickly.
The Class 10E1 was built with sophisticated traction linkages on the bogies. Together with the locomotive's electronic wheel-slip detection system, these traction struts, mounted between the linkages on the bogies and the locomotive body and colloquially referred to as grasshopper legs, ensure the maximum transfer of power to the rails without causing wheel-slip by reducing the adhesion of the leading bogie and increasing that of the trailing bogie by as much as 15% upon starting. [4]
This dual cab locomotive has a roof access ladder on one side only, immediately to the right of the cab access door. The roof access ladder end is marked as the no. 2 end. In visual appearance, the Series 1 and Series 2 locomotives are virtually indistinguishable from each other. [3]
Most of the Class 10E1 locomotives were placed in service at Nelspruit and Ermelo in Mpumalanga. In 1998 a number of Spoornet’s electric locomotives and most of their Class 38-000 electro-diesel locomotives were sold to Maquarie-GETX (General Electric Financing) and leased back to Spoornet for a ten-year period which was to expire in 2008. Of the Class 10E, Series 2, numbers 10-136 to 10-173 were included in this leasing deal. [1]
The Class 10E2, Series 2 introduced the new Spoornet orange livery with a yellow and blue chevron pattern on the cowcatchers. In the late 1990s at least one was repainted in the Spoornet blue livery with outline numbers on the long hood sides. After 2008 in the Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) era, several received the TFR red, green and yellow livery.
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