Unhappy Ending

Fresh from today, this might look like one of my standard scrapyard shots, which it is, albeit with nice lighting.

But for the German railfan, this is a very special sight, in a negative way: Seven locomotives of the class 181 have been towed here to be cut up. With only 25 having been built, and three already scrapped, a whooping one third of the entire locomotive class is set to disappear quite quickly. These machines were specially made for international traffic to France and Luxembourg, being able to run under two different electrification systems. These days, thanks to power electronics, you can just buy off-the-shelf locomotives that can run under four different voltage systems, both AC and DC. Back in the 60s and 70s, building such a locomotive was quite a challenge.

Until now, I only managed to catch one of these in the wild exactly once, by pure chance. Due to their field of action, it was not a usual occurrence for them to come through my region. These days, only four locomotives are still in regular service, as most routes have been taken over by more modern rolling stock, making such old beasts mostly redundant. Only one long distance train is being regularly hauled by one of these, apart from occasional freight trains, so the future is looking rather bleak, with a complete retirement of the class being highly likely.

And yes, the engine room hoods were a topic of debate. They were apparently resprayed during maintenance works, so either the paint on them is younger than on the rest of the locomotives, or they used a different paint that doesn't fade so quickly. When delivered, they were originally painted dark blue with a black frame, but the current traffic-red livery also suits them quite well, if they'd be well kept.

For more photos from today's tour, check out my DSO post, as always.

The eagle-eyed viewer may have spotted that there's an impostor in this row: After the three 181s, a lone class 115 (originally 110) snuck into the picture. That's 115 205, a locomotive that was built in 1958, retired in December 2014 after 56 years of service. It's amazing how long those old machines can last, and equally weird that a mid-50s locomotive is being scrapped along with mid-70s ones. But I admit, the 110 was the first of the standardized electrics, of which over 400 were built, while the 181 was a specially commissioned product for a now shrinking niche market.