Chen Melling

Though I'm a bit late to the party, I can explain the reason for the strange cab back is that HE 1645 originally built without one, as Haifa Harbour Works Dept. No. 5. The usual weather in then-Palestine made this mostly redundant. This is exemplified in this high-res picture of its sister, No. 6, at the Athlit Quarry: https://www.loc.gov/resource/matpc.15386/

Michael, can you please share the names of the shades noted on the paint diagram? They are not legible in the photo of it.

Thanks for your concern. These are tragic and frightening days here. Most of my immediate family and friends live in areas which have yet to be affected in this war, but we are worried of future developments and especially about our cousins and nephews serving in the army and involved in the fighting.

After searching on-line in vain I hope someone in this distinguished crowd can enlighten me on the operation pattern (and track layout) of the the two groups of Shinkansen terminus platforms at Tokyo main station. The two groups are not connected railway-wise. There are 6 Tokaido Shinkansen platform lines (3 islands) for up to 17 hourly departures: https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Japan-s-fastest-bullet-train-to-squeeze-out-trip-every-5-minutes2 But I am more interested in the other quartet of platform lines, serving the Tohoku Shinkansen line and diverging services. Some sources mention up to 15 hourly departures: https://www.ihra-hsr.org/en/hsr/_pdf/transport_density.pdf But the timetables I am able to find count the various services separately. I am hoping to find evidence of how do they manage to run 15tph/d from only 4 platforms, other than the well-covered "7-Minute Miracle": https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/truth-behind-japans-seven-minute-miracle-tim-romero I work for Israel Railways, and we are struggling with planning a reliable 6 tph/d service from 4 terminus platform lines, with only 2 services and a somewhat lower standard of end-of-run cleaning. Any track diagrams (with distances), train graphs etc.?

A bit off-topic but this quote is a bit puzzling to me, as Palestine Railways inherited 45 of these GCR-type brake vans, not 35. I wonder whether this is a mistake or perhaps 10 were not built new but rather taken from GCR's stock.

Actually, IR did look for suitable dual-powered locomotives: https://www.rail.co.il/tenders/Documents/shlomit/rfi 6.2.19/Dual locomotive RFI 06.02.2019.pdf and even received permission to purchase a dozen without tender from Stadler's Spanish factory (similar to Baureihe 159), but during the COVID19 lockdowns it was possible to speed-up electrification works and make up most of the accumulated delays thus far. At that point it was considered wasteful to buy such expensive and complicated locomotives for a presumed short service life and more electric locomotives and EMUs were ordered instead.

As I said earlier, because of extensive electrification, Israel Railways is not really in the market for more Diesels. In fact, we have quite a few to sell, if anyone's interested.

A close relative of the Eurolight / UKlight family is Israel Railways' Euro3200. It has similar bogies, buffers and (presumaly) underframe and body construction, but built to a larger loading gauge, and more importantly, with an EMD power package (including a 12-710G3C-U2 engine) as per IR's requirements. The 24 members of this 160km/h (100mph) class are considered very rough riders. In fact, Stadler eventually agreed to supply IR with a free compensation loco. However, this was to be of the much more agreeable 130km/h capable Euro4000 Co'Co', of which IR already had 14 examples in service, both greight and passenger. Israel Railways Euro3200 Nos. 1306 and 1319 at the Haifa loco depot, 03.01.2018 - photo by Chen Melling

This was essentially achieved in Ireland, with (resp.) Class 121/141, re-engined Class 001 and Class 071 (with a turbocharged V12 instead of a V16).

Israel Railways purchased 48 of the Spanish-built JT42BW Bo'Bo' type (in several batches) plus 9 of the similar Co'Co' type, JT42CW. However, we are not in need of any more similar locos, as electrification of most passenger lines is progressing rapidly. As the JT42BWs are the oldest diesels in passenger service, some will be withdrawn (any takers?) while others might get re-geared for freight service - assuming work will be found for them, which is a bit of a problem at the moment.

W.A.H. Brown wrote of his WW1 railway experience in Egypt and Palestine in a 2-part article published in The Locomotive News, 25/01/1921 and 25/02/1921 issues (Vol. VIII, issues 46 and 48, resp.) titled "With the R.O.D. in Palestine". In the article he repeatedly refers to himself, to his colleagues and to their equipment as belonging to the R.O.D. A comprehensive article about railways in this theater of war was published in two very-similar versions in Modern Transport (18/10/1919) and The Railway Gazette (21/09/1920). It includes an organizational chart of what became Palestine Military Railway, which is headed by the "Director of Railways (H.Q. Cairo)", with of his subordinates (through the Deputy Director of Railways) being "Officer i/c R.O.D." and it is mentioned in the text about the track that its maintenance was performed by the R.O.D. Another such article appeared in the Journal of Permanent Way Institution in 1931 where the writer notes that "The operating was done by a Railway Operating Division [...] which ultimately constituted the largest unit of that establishment in the War." It is my understanding that there was more than one "R.O.D." - one division in Western Europe, another on the Egyptian Front (as part of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force) and who knows where else.

Anyone interested in modelling these half-breeds might find use in the attached two (rather poor) scans of RP&T drawings. I believe I got those from my friend Greg Martin.

In fact, this is not a complete list of WW1 WD wagons, as it excludes at least most of the wagons that were sent to the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. Most of these were types already listed here, but numbered in a local series, prefixed with E. E.g. E.1281 - E.1400 were 10t vans very similar to the LNWR D.88 type, and probably identical to the WD 36301-37250, except for the side chains. However, some of the EEF wagons probably did come from this list, as the bore numbers such as 34013-34476 for 12t covered vans. There was also a series of 250 steel-bodied vans built for the EEF to an existing Egyptian design, which were numbered in the global WD sequence as 38001-38250 but are also missing from the above list. Almost all surviving EEF stock was handed-over (actually sold) to the fledgling Palestine Railways on its formation, on October 1st 1920. Below is a works photo of WD 12t open No. E.701 built by Hurst Nelson, from the collection of the Israel Railway Museum.

The Railway Magazine had a photo from the J.H. Price collection published in its October 1977 issue which purports to show No. 0164: The resolution is too low for much detail, but the steam being let from the top of the dome confirm it has the Drummond boiler with appropriate safety valves. (By the way, the loco is heading an LSWR(!) ambulance train on the Jerusalem line, this being one of 2 such 6-carriage trains of former "American Eagle" stock sent to Egypt, numbered 6 and 9 locally. The one seen here is, I believe, No. 48, nee 6, and the photo would be from the latter half of 1918) Assuming this was the only such locomotive over here with such an arrangement, I can now identify the one in this photo, from the collection of my friend Alon Siton, as being No. 0164 as it lacks the Ramsbottom safety valves: (The loco is shown here with the same train, this time in the Sinai Peninsula, but the photograph was taken earlier than the previous one, as the train still lacks the double roof added locally to help keep it cool).

Perhaps the attached table of dimensions, from Wiener's book on the railways of Egypt, would be of help.

Indeed this is Lod station. The Esslingen V60-based shunter is of the same type as No. 212 preserved in The Israel Railway Museum.

While not technically in Europe, Israel is now hosting the European Athletics U18 Championships and has amassed 4(!) Eurovision Song Contest wins, so may be eligible to be included in an answer for the OP... Israel Railways has 4 USA tanks after 1948, of which 3 were operated, one of them (No. 21) was the star of the end-of-steam ceremony in February, 1959 (see attached photo).

I can't recall reading about trouble with brackish water in Egyptian locomotives - E.L. Ahrons certainly didn't mention any such in his series of articles in The Locomotive Magazine dealing with Egyptian locomotive history. After all, they had the Nile to rely on for water.

The photo in the original post was by Ron Garraway, later the father of Allan Garraway of Ffestiniog Railway fame. It was taken in summer 1918 at the newly-regauged Jerusalem station, and purportedly shows the first amnulance train there. The carriages are indeed former LSWR American Eagle Saloons. A dozen of them were rebuilt by the company as two 6-carriage ambulance trains for the WD in WW1 and sent to Egypt to be used on the Palestine front. The original identities of the carriages involved are given in G.R. Weddell's thorough article in the Nov. 1982 issue of Model Railway Constructor, though Mr. Weddel had little information regarding their subsequent histories. In the Middle East the trains were numbered 6 and 9, eventually receiving numbers 48 and 51, respectively, in the unified WD series. In 1920 they were sold to the Government of Palestine and continued to be used on its Palestine Railways, which gradually converted them back to civilian use, mostly as 3rd Class carriages. Most also received replacement matchboard sides on the original (modified) body frame and thus lost their typically British turn-under section. The last were withdrawn from Israel Railway service c. 1954. PR/IR Nos. 314 (3rd) and 316 (Brake/3rd) are preserved, the latter as an empty shell on a frame only. The attached photo (c. of my friend Alon Siton) shows one of the EEF's LSWR 0395s pulling train No. 6 before the addition of a double roof and side shades, in the Sinai Peninsula, probably during 1917.

In their early years (1850s-1870s), Egyptian railways tended to buy whatever the British (and occasionally French) builders threw at them, mostly in low single-digit quantities. Thus the British observer of the period would have found many familiar-looking machines in the Land of the Pharaohs, some being very slight modifications of types built for the home railways, some actually designed and built for home railways but eventually exported. The most prominent example of this practice must have been Caledonian Railway 2-2-2 No. 186, (Neilson 850): https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/File:Im1862EnV13-p299.jpg - of which type two more were later ordered. See also below and attached scans.

The NSE-esque in Israel Railways' preserved Mk. 2C is not authentic, and was installed after preservation in the Israel Railway Museum. However, it was not from specially imported material, but from moquette stock used by IR in the late 1990s to cover the seats in all coaching stock being refurbished at the time. Hence its presence in several of the European-built carriages in our collection, which were left as-withdrawn. The interior of preserved Yugoslav-built no. 609 seen below is representative of these. The Mark 2Cs were not given this new trim in service as by the time IR started using it they were already on their way out, the last being withdrawn in 1997-8.

Actually, my friend Alon, who runs this flickr page, got this one slightly wrong - ESR 1177 is not exactly a Henschel product, rather an Egyptian conversion of a locomotive originally built by Henschel, as is explained in the attached scans from "The Locomotive". Mind you, the original engines were not designed by Henschel, but were copies of a series supplied by Franco-Belge.

And don't forget a genuine Crusaders fort in the background! (It is visible in some of the photos I posted earlier) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Château_Pèlerin

The Athlit Quarry of the HHWD was not representative of rail-served quarries in Palestine, but is the most documented of them and had, by far, the most extensive standard gauge system. The diagram below was made by my good friend and mentor, the late Paul Cotterell, for his article on the subject published in Industrial Railway Journal 130 (with follow-ups in issues 132, 137, 145 and 231). Some very good pictures of this quarry are available in the Matson Collection: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q= Athlit quarries. Below are a some further pictures. The mainline-capable wagons, carrying "skips", were all converted from Palestine Railways 12t WD trucks (which I mentioned in an earlier post). Of the internal-user dumb-buffered antiques I know nothing...

Of the 16 Hunslet 0-6-0ST owned by the HHWD, 4 were of the outside-cylinder variety (see leaflets below for comparison). They were split between the Haifa Harbour construction site and the Athlit quarries. Later 2 were moved to the Jaffa Port upgrade works. Eventually several were sold back to the UK, while 7 were sold to the War Dpartment, (numbered WD 1-7) and used in 1940s by the Army in Palestine. The photo of W^D 1 below is apparantly representative of the livery applied by the military. The original HHWD livery was much more fancy, probably green lined in red.