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Interesting Overseas Post
- Subject: Interesting Overseas Post
- From: "David Ryder" <daver@fastinternet.net.au>
- Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 06:52:23 +1000
- Newsgroups: aus.rail
- Organization: Telstra Big Pond Direct
Came across this post and thought I would repost it
here as I found it interesting and thought other aus railers might
too.
Dave R
Hello everybody,
a few weeks ago I had the
chance to visit the remaining steam activities on
the meter gauge lines
around Mirpur Khas in the South-Eastern parts of
Pakistan.
Steam still
continues but the activity is on a very low level - the number
of engines
required to run the remaining services vary from 1 to 4. Luckily
the shed
foreman manages it to keep 5 engines running - but had to buy
spare parts for
his steam engines from a scrap dealer who got them from the
now closed steam
loco repairshop at Lahore.
The shed´s running board speaks a clear
language:
the tracked mileage for September 1996: 40.028, for September 97:
12.636
and for September 98: only 11.547!
While the line to
Khokhropar sees a well patronized daily return service
(train no MG5/6) plus
an additional train (MG14/15) on Mondays only up to
Pithoro, do the other
once-a-week-services to Nawabshah (MG21/22 Sunday)
and on the Loop-line
(MG14/15 Monday) run as Ghost trains with more staff
than passengers.
The
reason for the continued service to Khokhropar is the massive presence
of the
national army forces in this boarder region to India. All transports
of heavy
material have to be done either by air or by rail because some of
the road
bridges are too weak to carry the heavy load vehicles. Amazingly
the army
sponsors new river bridges for the rail! The next step should be
that the
army sponsors new steam locomotives as well because as they do not
talk to
Indian people on the other side of this dangerous boarder
they
don´t know that there are a lot of jobless Indian
meter gauge diesel
available...
Because of the army presence in this
area it is highly recommended not to
go there without an official permit and
the guidance by an army officer.
Although I followed all rules even I (with
an railway and army official)
had massive problems at Pithoro junction where
it needed a lot of phone
calls between "my" army officer and the
army headquarter to prevent another
army guy to arrest all three
"intruders".
Some details for number-fans:
serviceable:
MS63, YE722, YD520, YD522, SP138
dumped: YD523, YD524, SP127, MS65,
YE728
under repair: YE732
On the train back to Karachi I met a
driver from the Karachi diesel shed
who proudly told me that a German
engineer arrived a week ago who did the
fine-tuning of the new Adtranz diesel
locomotives which have been bought by
the Pakistan Railways recently (funded
by a Japanese world bank
contribution). Of course I was invited to visit the
shed and to tell
everybody that these new diesels are the best the Pakistan
Railways could
get.
During our conversation the engineer told me: "I
really don´t know what
those people will do with these machines if an
electronic breakdown occurs
- there is nobody available here to repair the
high-tech electronic parts
of these locomotives. And they won´t have
the money to get spare parts from
abroad".
I should have told
them that SLM would be able to offer something
more
exciting...
Cheers,
Peter-H. Patt
garratt@compuserve.com
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