Train nerding:
In 1963-64, the Hungarian State Railways (MÁV) 🇭🇺 bought 20 American-licensed 🇺🇸 Swedish 🇸🇪 made NOHAB AA16 locomotives. They were put into service under class name "M61", and they were a huge success.
This was so controversial in the East-Bloc, that the Soviet Union decided to build an entire loco-series to compete under type code "M62", and they flooded the entire East-Bloc with them. The naming directly comes from the Hungarian code for the NOHABs.
In operation the M61 had proven to be far more reliable and economical than the M62, and gained cult status among train fans in Hungary over the years.
6 out of the original 20 M61s are still operational, despite the state railways' best efforts in the late 90s to scrap them and sell them for parts. (001, 006, 010, 017, 019, 020 are operational, 002 still exists but almost entirely parted out, 004 partially preserved as a museum exhibit after a major accident).
After state railways were denied - due to political pressure - to buy more locos from the west, and the soviet ones were, honestly, just subpar, they also tried build our own big diesel mainline loco.
They became the "M63". Only 10 were ever built between 1970 and 1975. They were great - when they worked, but they were hopelessly unreliable. They were scrapped in 1990. Only the M63 003 remains as a museum exhibit, but - true to the classes reputation - it's not operational.
@dec_hl It's different things, as far as I know.
The M62 was a typical USSR-style design: they used an ancient engine with a relatively high maintenance need, very smokey, leaking all possible fluids from many different orifices, manufactured in poor quality. They also caused heavy wear on the tracks at first. They had the chance to iterate on it though, so it slowly improved, and M62s still serve at MÁV, and I guess at many other railways in the hundreds... In the end, it was an "okay" engine.
@dec_hl The M63 simply never got beyond its initial production run, so it had a lot of growing pains. After the 1970s, political push to create an in-house design has faded, plus the electrification of previously diesel-only main lines reduced the need for a loco the size of the M63.
Two related designs exist, the V63 a large electric loco, and the M41 that is a smaller diesel one, but it's diesel-hydraulic, not diesel-electric, like the M63 was. Both types are still in use today.
@dec_hl The M62 (a.k.a the "Taigatrommel" in the GDR), also has a related design: the DR 130 series (a.k.a. the "Ludmilla"), which is usually seen as the successor of the M62.
Ironically, as the story goes, MÁV also tried to buy from these engines, as they were somewhat better, but for whatever reason, the Soviet manufacturer kept shipping M62s to Hungary instead... So they decided to make the M63 then.
Charlie Balogh
GK
SuperIlu
Tom Keresztes
րպհտին ջվգեան ⊽🜁