by Allen Hazen
I was rereading a bit of John S. Kirkland's "The Diesel Builders: vol. 3, Baldwin" last night and spotted something where I think he may have made a mistake.
I was looking at the section about the Cab-style units (think of a shortened version of the carbody used on the DP20 demonstrators, with CC trucks and an eight cylinder, 1000 hp, VO engine inside) built for Russia at the end of the Second World War. Kirkland says their Russian road numbers were A6 20 71 through A6 20 100. I suspect that he was misreading the Cyrillic lettering. On the side of the nose of the unit (the 71 is shown), something that looks like A6 20 is painted next to the illuminated number board with the 71. The 20 is definitely a 20, but the "A6" is actually "DB". (The Russian D is roughly triangular-- it's derived from the Greek Delta-- so looks a little bit like a Roman-alphabet A. Russian "B" is like a lower-case Roman-alphabet "b", but with a horizontal stroke at the top of the upright, so it looks rather like a "6".) I'm not sure what the "20" is doing, but "DB" ***might*** stand for "Diesel - Baldwin." Russian locomotive classifications did sometimes note builder: Alco and Baldwin built 5 steam demonstrators each (Alco's were 2-10-4, Baldwin's 2-10-2) for the Soviet railways in the 1930s, which got classed TA and TB respectively.
(Kirkland had access to lots of original documents, and I think his books are far above the usual standards of "railfan scholarship". I think I may have caught a RARE lapse in a book I think very highly of.)
I was looking at the section about the Cab-style units (think of a shortened version of the carbody used on the DP20 demonstrators, with CC trucks and an eight cylinder, 1000 hp, VO engine inside) built for Russia at the end of the Second World War. Kirkland says their Russian road numbers were A6 20 71 through A6 20 100. I suspect that he was misreading the Cyrillic lettering. On the side of the nose of the unit (the 71 is shown), something that looks like A6 20 is painted next to the illuminated number board with the 71. The 20 is definitely a 20, but the "A6" is actually "DB". (The Russian D is roughly triangular-- it's derived from the Greek Delta-- so looks a little bit like a Roman-alphabet A. Russian "B" is like a lower-case Roman-alphabet "b", but with a horizontal stroke at the top of the upright, so it looks rather like a "6".) I'm not sure what the "20" is doing, but "DB" ***might*** stand for "Diesel - Baldwin." Russian locomotive classifications did sometimes note builder: Alco and Baldwin built 5 steam demonstrators each (Alco's were 2-10-4, Baldwin's 2-10-2) for the Soviet railways in the 1930s, which got classed TA and TB respectively.
(Kirkland had access to lots of original documents, and I think his books are far above the usual standards of "railfan scholarship". I think I may have caught a RARE lapse in a book I think very highly of.)