Mongolian Railways takes delivery of Evolution Series loco

Mongolian Railways has taken delivery of the company's first Evolution Series locomotive. The unit is apparently built to the same specs as the ES locomotives built for Kazakhstan.

The general director of the railway mentioned that part of the reason why they chose the Evolution Series is because of the positive experiences they've had with GE in the past, including Dash 7 locomotives and other locomotives that have been modernized with GE engines and systems.

Read the press release at: http://finchannel.com/Main_News/Tech/47 ... _Railways/

That is good news in these grim times for locomotive builders! (Thanks for posting these links to breaking GE locomotive news stories, MEC407!)

Comments:
(1) Kazakhstan Railways, K. being a part of the former Soviet Union, are probably built to the Russian 5 foot gauge. I ***think*** (not at all confidently-- my evidence is the use of two different line-widths on a map in an issue of "Trains" back in the 1970s) that the Mongolian railway's main North-South line is 5 foot gauge from Ulan Bataar north to the Russian border and Standard (4 foot 8.5 inches) south to the Chinese border (Chinese railways being standard gauge). Leading to an obvious question. The press release doesn't help: it mentions that the Ulan Bataar Railway connects Mongolia both to Russia+Europe and to "East Asia".

(2) The Mongolian railway spokesperson quoted in the press release is "A. Batbold." There is a prominent Mongolian paleontologist (the Gobi Desert has been a famous area for dinosaurs and early mammals since the 1920s) named Barsbold. So: hint to the fiction writers among you: if you want to make up a plausible-sounding Mongolian surname, "bold" might be a good second syllable to use. (Grin!)

Allen Hazen wrote:That is good news in these grim times for locomotive builders! (Thanks for posting these links to breaking GE locomotive news stories, MEC407!)

Dont' know how good the news is ... it is a one locomotive order and was built in 2008.

Sean Graham-White

Well, a LITTLE bit good! Thanks for the clarification, Sean.

... Mongolian Railways doesn't order in the quantities Union Pacific does. I believe they got a C30-7i (or maybe it was called a U30C) as a single-unit order some years back.