Big cog-and-adhesion steam power - Trans Andino vs Austria's Ore Mt. RR

On my recent post about Argentine narrow gauge steam in 1977, I touched briefly on the 0-8-0+0-6-0 Kitson-Meyer cog-and-adhesion engines that worked the 8 percent grades of the meter-gauge Trans Andean Railroad. In 1977 we were too late to see these brutish engines in action, unless we had been there in a major snow storm when the last of these engines worked in snow plow service for which the electric and diesel engines were evidently less capable.



But in the 1970s equally brutish engines were working the iron ore trains over Praebichl Pass in Austria. Okay, those 0-12-0Ts were standard gauge cog-and-adhesion engines, but they worked just as hard over the 7 percent grades with maximum tonnage trains. Here an 0-12-0 has arrived on the Praebichl Pass summit with a loaded iron ore train after climbing 2,360 ft from Eisenerz. The pusher engine is about to cut off and return to Eisenerz.





It is raining lightly as the crew performs the mandatory brake test. The train will move forward shortly and the engine will engage the dual cog rails



The train is starting to descend the 4.5 miles of 7 percent grade to Vordernberg where the grade eases and from where the train will continue by adhesion to Leoben, 2125 ft lower than Praebichl.



Altough the Austrian climb and descent is substantially lower than the 8,000 ft climb of the narrow gauge Trans Andino, it is likely that the Praebichl Pass route encountered a greater accumulation of snow in the winter.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/18/2024 09:13AM by Olaf Rasmussen.