A Belgian industrial miscellany

[nomisd]

Having posted a few photos of Belgian industrial locos in this thread, I went through my photos and decided to scan a few more and start a thread with them. All of these following photos were taken by me at various locations around Belgium in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Most of them are working industrial locos but I have included one or two more interesting preserved locos. 

 

The first is a preserved loco at the SNCB shed at Haine St Pierre, where a number of preserved locos were stored. I'm not actually sure of the identity of this loco at the moment

 

 

 

Another preserved loco. This is a Moes standard gauge loco (honestly that is standard gauge) preserved at the former Bois du Luc colliery in La Louviere which is now known as Ecomusee Regional du Centre.

 

 

Next is Moyse built loco at a scrapyard in Charleroi. It was a working loco and not there for scrap 

 

 

Next is the indigenous Belgian industrial loco - the Cockerill. SNCB had some of this type of loco (the class 91) many of which found their way to industrial use but Cockerill built many more of them for industry. This one is seen working at a tinplating works in Marchin. The site also had a Ruston and Hudswell Clarke which they had got second hand from a Belgian loco dealer.

 

 

This a Deutz at CBR, a cement works, at Harmignies. They also had two Cockerill locos.

 

 

Finally in this post, the erstwhile Cockerill Sambre steel works at Charleroi. An absolutely superb place to spend an hour on a Saturday morning. The road in the photo separates the works from the SNCB exchange sidings and trains of steel work out over the road to get to the exchange sidings. In addition to this, loaded torpedos of molten steel were shunted from one part of the works to another by drawing out over the crossing and then setting back. That is what can seen in this photo. What can't be seen in the photo is that the train is actually moving towards the car - the car driver decided that the flashing lights didn't apply to him!

 

 

More later.

 

 

 

[EddieB]

Another excellent and interesting selection of photos, nomisd.

 

I think the first may be a motor trolley built by Robert Aebi AG (RAAG/RACO), Zürich (thought to be b/n 1215 of 1933), ex-Ideal Standard, Houdeng Goegnies.

 

Are you aware of the book listed about halfway down this page, which listed all known Benelux extant industrial and preserved locos?

 

http://www.irsociety.co.uk/books/foreign.htm

[nomisd]

Are you aware of the book listed about halfway down this page, which listed all known Benelux extant industrial and preserved locos?

 

http://www.irsociety.co.uk/books/foreign.htm

 

Yes, I do have a copy of it on my bookshelf but was just too lazy to go and get it to check! A second helping, starting with another steel works, this one a few miles down the road from Charerloi at Chatalet. The loco shed here is right next to the road entrance to the works and also next to a footpath that runs alongside the canal. If you turned up on a Saturday afternoon, there would be locos parked outside, like this Cockerill master slave combo.

 

 

Going further east, you reach Liege which had a two large Cockerill Sambre steel works with a number smaller out works. At one of these at Jemeppe had another example of a Cockerill master slave pairing

 

 

Between Charleroi and Liege, along the Sambre river valley are a number of quarries with locos. One of them, Llhoist at Marche les Dames had a couple of locos. One was a standard fayre Cockerill

 

 

The other was far more interesting. It is probably a Couillet built loco. It was very much spare loco being completely cut off from the system. It is now preserved in an industrial museum in a former colliery in Charleroi.

 

 

Llhoist have another quarry known as Carriers et Fours a Daumont-Wauthier at Hermalle-sous-Huy. This has an excellent loco shed alongside the road and a tunnel mouth through a rock face to the quarry that looks it came straight of a model - never let anyone tell you that there isn't a prototype for everything. It has two Cockerills, this being one of them which was preparing a train in the SNCB exchange sidings by the Sambre river. When it had finished, it took its train from the sidings, across the main road and through the tunnel.

 

[nomisd]

The first two photos from this batch are both taken at the same site. It is a wagon repair company in Antwerp docks called Sati. Antwerp docks is enormous - you can spend a whole day driving round it looking at railways and drive nearly 200 miles in a day (I have done this two or three times). I have no idea how miles of railway track are in the complex but it must run in to several hundreds of miles. To go with this, there are a commensurate number of wagons so its no surprise there is a need for a wagon repairer. Sati's site was big and had at least four locos working there. The first shot is of an Orenstein & Koppel MV6

 

 

They also had a a number of Cockerills and unlike most others these were ex SNCB class 91 - this was 9107

 

 

On the edge of the docks is Antwerp Bulk Terminal, which amongst other things handles imported coal. They have a number of Vollert locos like this

 

 

On the other side of Schelde river from Antwerp is the town of Heiskem. There is a small industrial area which dates from the early 20th century. On this is a concrete manufacturing facility run by Betonkonstruktie, The first time I visited here I found the loco shed next to the road which was sadly closed but the loco could be seen under teh roller shutter door. However this time for some reason the door was open and the loco could be got at. As you can see from the photo we didn't venture too near the loco which could probably considered out of use. A weathering project for someone?

 

 

Lastly in this batch a CFD built loco shunting at BP Amoco in Feuly.

 

 

[Fat Controller]

Thanks for publishing these. I like the Vollert loco- an ideal start for a novice scratch-builder who doesn't do curves and coupling rods....

[nomisd]

This set of photos is slightly different as they are all from one location - Carrieres Unies de Porphyre at Lesssines.  This was the last rail served porphyry quarry in the  area, from the research that I have I have done there were at least half a dozen if not more at one time. As with most of the other places in these photos we turned up here not knowing what we were going to find, what a treat we did find. 

 

The site has three Cockerill locos that it keeps in this loco shed

 

 

Two of the locos were in the shed. The locos are numbered CUP 2 to 4, one assumes that there was a CUP 1.

 

 

As you can see, the shed is just long enough to hold a loco on a road. The third loco, CUP 4, was working moving wagons through the loading point.

 

 

 

We happened to get there just as they had finished loading the train and were about to move it to the exchange sidings which are next to the SNCB station, a distance of about half a kilometre. The track on the right goes to the shed.

 

 

The loco shed can be seen to the right of the loco in the next photo

 

 

The line crosses a road just before it reaches SNCB. As well as lights they use a man in the road to ensure that the traffic does stop

 

 

 

 

I assume that they have more than one loco to handle trains with more wagons - I have just look at the site on Google Maps and in the satellite view there is a 10 wagon train under the loader with two locos coupled together parked next to the shed. This would suggest that the site is still working.

Edited March 29, 2015 by nomisd

[nomisd]

This set of photos all have a single thing in common - a British ancestry. The first two locos were found in that favourite location, Antwerp docks. The first is a 1973 built Hunslet at Belgian Refining Corporation, where it was supplied new. The loco obviously worked as there were always lots of wagons in the site but it always seemed to be parked in exactly the same location the half dozen times that I saw it.

 

 

The second is another 1973 built Hunslet at a steel terminal called Hessenatie. The Hunslet salesman obviously did good business in 1973 as it was one of two identical locos at the site. 

 

 

The next two locos have a common denominator. They are both second hand locos that were purchased from the UK by a locomotive dealer in Maldegem called Sombermai. From the early 1970s they purchased at least a dozen locos from either scrap dealers or from their original owners. Some of these (like these two)  have turned up in use in industry, others just disappeared. The first is an ex Port of Bristol Authority Hudswell Clarke. It is seen here at Carmeuse's lime works at a place called Moha. The loco previously worked at the same company's plant at Seilles, on the SNCB line between Charleroi and Liege.

 

 

The second is a 165DE Ruston. It came from the West Midlands Gas Board's Windsor Street gasworks in Birmingham in 1974. It went to the TDM site at Marchin. When I visited there (see first post) it was out of use and dumped in an awful place for photography. However it was eventually donated to the preservation society at As, who repainted and it is seen there.

 

 

The last one has slightly cheeky UK origin. Its a road rail loco with its origin in a JCB. It is converted by a company in Antwerp docks called UCA, who purchased the machines from JCB and converted them to rail use. We called into their factory entirely on spec and were treated to an hour long tour of the factory and workshops, which is located in Merksem which is a more industrial (as opposed to storage) part of the docks. The track that the machine is pictured on is a SNCB branch that runs about another kilometre to a couple of rail served sites. After we had been shown around, the person who was showing us around asked "Do you want to see one in action?". Well, yes, expecting him to put it on the short section of track that they had in their yard. No, he drove it out of the yard, over the road and dropped it onto the branch and drove it up and down for 5 minutes so we could take photos. What can you say?!

 

[EddieB]

Mention of the former Port of Bristol Authority HC reminds me of a sister locomotive that passed through the same hands to end up in Belgium.  This is former no. 25 "CELIDON" at the premises of Georges et Cie, Marchienne (Charleroi) in 1999. Unlike the Carmeuse locomotive, which had been converted to hydraulic transmission, "D2005" retains mechanical linkage. (Of course the dispersal of the PoBA locomotives - steam and diesel - is a subject in itself).

 

 

Also present at Georges et Cie. was "04874", a Cockerill 0-4-0DH of 1957.

 

[-PGG-]

Sorry for this late reply.

 

This Cockerill serial 3560 of 1957 is one of the really heavy versions of the universal Belgian locotracteurs. it has a Model type 'CO 40 ST-FD' which has the thickest deck plate of 198 mm and the thickest end plates of 160 mm for an all-up weight of 40 tonnes. This size was usually only found in the steel mills which begs the question was this obtained by Georges second-hand? If so from whom?

 

-PGG- Tasmania

[EddieB]

Hello PGG and welcome to RMweb (though it feels like we’ve met before!)

 

Based on your identification of the works number, the Cockerill at Charleroi appears to have been supplied new to Arbed in Luxembourg, being numbered successively DH-1 and 115*, before being sold on to George’s et Cie. in 1984.

 

*According to one list, however other sources suggest Arbed 115 was another (later) Cockerill locomotive.

 

 

Edited October 21, 2019 by EddieB

[m0rris]

Thanks for putting these up, these are absolutely fascinating! Out of interest, what happened to the Bristolian Hudswell Clarkes?