South African Class 35 000

Manufacturer

The South African Class 35-000 type GE U15C diesel-electric locomotive was designed and built for the South African Railways (SAR) by General Electric (GE) and imported. The first batch of fifty locomotives was delivered in 1972, numbered in the range from 35-001 to 35-050, with the first locomotives arriving in March. These were followed by a second batch of twenty in 1973, numbered in the range from 35-051 to 35-070. The last locomotives arrived in May 1973.

GE and GM-EMD designs

The Class 35 locomotive series consists of five sub-classes, the GE Classes 35-000 and 35-400 and the General Motors Electro-Motive Division (GM-EMD) Classes 35-200, 35-600 and 35-800. Both these manufacturers also produced locomotives for the South African Classes 33, 34 and 36.

The locomotive has interlinked bogies, hence the Co+Co wheel arrangement classification. The linkage is usually hidden from view by the saddle-shaped fuel tank.

Distinguishing Features

With the GE U15C Class 35 locomotives, the Class 35-000 and 35-400 are visually indistinguishable from each other. An externally visible modification, which was done during major overhauls, is the addition of a saddle hood astride the hump on the long hood behind the cab. By 2013 this modification had been done on a large number of Class 35-000s, but not on any Class 35-400s.

South African Railways

The Class 35 is South Africa’s standard branchline diesel-electric locomotive. GE Class 35-000s were designed for light rail conditions and they work on most branchlines in the central, western, southern and southeastern parts of the country.

In the Western Cape, they work out of Cape Town on the branchlines to Bitterfontein, Saldanha and Caledon, and out of Worcester to George. A threesome is allocated to the Swartkops depot in Port Elizabeth, from where they work the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) MetroRail commuter trains to Uitenhage.

Zambia

Between October 1978 and May 1993, Zambia Railways (ZR) hired locomotives to solve it's chronic shortages in motive power, mainly from South Africa but at times also from Zaire, Zimbabwe, the TAZARA Railway and even the Zambian Copper Mines. In Zambia, the South African locomotives were mainly used on goods trains between Livingstone and Kitwe, sometimes in tandem with a ZR locomotive and occasionally also on passenger trains.

The first period of hire lasted from October 1978 until about April 1981. Locomotives were selected from a float of engines in the Classes 33-400, 35-000 and 35-200, which were allocated by the Railways for hire to Zambia. The South African fleet in Zambia was never constant, since locomotives were continually exchanged as they became due back in South Africa for their three-monthly services.

The float of Class 35-000 locomotives, allocated by the Railways for hire to ZR, included the locomotives annotated "Zambia" in the "allocation" column in the table below. The first Class 35-000 locomotives to serve in Zambia, were on hire by May 1980. They served there for less than a year, being employed on road work as well as shunting. By the end of March 1981, the last Class 35-000 to remain there was no. 35-064, which was due to return south as soon as the last of ZR’s new Krupp-built diesel locomotives, no. 0-210, was delivered.

NLPI Ltd.

NLPI Limited, abbreviated from New Limpopo Projects Investments, is a Mauritius-registered company which specialises in private sector investments, using the build-operate-transfer (BOT) concept. It had three connected railway operations in Zimbabwe and Zambia, which formed a rail link between South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In Zambia, the RSZ locomotive fleet included former ZR locomotives, but the rest of the locomotive fleet of all three operations consisted of South African GM-EMD Classes 34-200, 34-600 and 34-800 and GE Classes 35-000 and 35-400 locomotives. These locomotives were sometimes marked or branded as either BBR or LOG or both, but their status, whether leased or loaned, was unclear since they were still on the TFR roster and still often worked in South Africa as well. The locomotives did not appear to be restricted to working in any one of the three operations sections and have been observed being transferred across the bridge at Victoria Falls between Zimbabwe and Zambia, as required. Class 35-000 locomotives which serve with NLPI, include the locomotives annotated "NLPI" in the "allocation" column in the table below.

Zambia Railways, the state-owned holding company, resumed control of the Zambian national rail network on 11 September 2012. This followed the government’s decision to revoke the operating concession which had been awarded to RSZ, after Finance Minister Alexander Chikwanda claimed that RSZ had "blatantly disregarded the provisions of the agreement" and had been "acting in a manner prejudicial to the interests of Zambians”.

Works numbers

The Class 35-000 builder’s works numbers and, where applicable, leased service in Zambia or lately with NLPI, are listed in the table.

Illustration

The main picture shows no. 35-020 in the Transnet Freight Rail livery and with a saddle hood, in the Orex Yard at Saldanha on 10 February 2013. Other liveries which were applied to Class 35-000 locomotives, are illustrated below. The last picture displays the top of a locomotive with a saddle hood. It was involved in a major derailment near Moorreesburg on 7 June 2007, when the track roadbed was washed away during heavy rain and flooding.