International Railroad Discussion > Siberia and the Russian Far East

1. A track side water tower, most stations no matter how small have one of these. I expect they were for the station and it's community not for watering steam engines. Many are freshly painted like this on in that blue Russians seem to like so much. Approx 7 hours east of Irkutsk.

2. The river port of Novosibirsk. End of day three from Beijing.

3. Really in Europe now, station stop at Perm, the last night on the train. A pair of 2TE types ready to take a work train, in this instance an empty welded rail train west. I would have loved to have heard these beasts get a roll on their train.

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1. Departing Perm.

2. Typical platform snack kiosk. This one sold very good hot perigees on the other side and was unusual in that it sold beer. Most don't these days. The era of Russian trains being rolling benders is over. Most stations don't have alcohol of any kind on sale or cigarettes.

3.Typical Russian suburban train.

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Last for this trip probably, a line side Russian church.

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A great series of uploads from this rarely photographed network. Those locos look huge. Many thanks, Chris uk.

Always look forward to your great photos from far away places. Keep up the good work!

Steve Mitchell
http://www.yardgoatimages.com

YG Wrote:
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> Always look forward to your great photos from far
> away places. Keep up the good work!
>
> Steve Mitchell
> http://www.yardgoatimages.com


Thanks Steve

Thank you for the pictures GettingShort! Keep these coming...

Especially the RzD colored Ukrainian Lugansk / Luhansk built 2Te116-1638 with its dynamic brake radiators looked interesting this time. What is scribbled to its side? Look almost like graffiti but somehow I doubt it is.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/01/14 03:42 by McKey.

McKey Wrote:
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> Thank you for the pictures GettingShort! Keep
> these coming...
>
> Especially the RzD colored Ukrainian Lugansk /
> Luhansk built 2Te116-1638 with its dynamic brake
> radiators looked interesting this time. What is
> scribbled to its side? Look almost like graffiti
> but somehow I doubt it is.


Good question. I don't know, TCh 1E or TCh 1Z no idea what that might refer to.

I think we are at the brink of a new discovery. Earlier I found in Vainikkala, Finland (next to Russian border) working a re-engined 2M62 that was classified similarly Ch something. I'll have to dig up the picture later somewhere. And similarly the plates still said 2M62. Gone was the steam style billowing smoke so some clear progress here!

GettingShort Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> McKey Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Thank you for the pictures GettingShort! Keep
> > these coming...
> >
> > Especially the RzD colored Ukrainian Lugansk /
> > Luhansk built 2Te116-1638 with its dynamic
> brake
> > radiators looked interesting this time. What is
> > scribbled to its side? Look almost like
> graffiti
> > but somehow I doubt it is.
>
>
> Good question. I don't know, TCh 1E or TCh 1Z no
> idea what that might refer to.

Oh geez, those wacky Westerners..... :-P

On the side of the 2TE116, it says "TCh-13", and is a reference to the "depot" that the locomotive is assigned to.

TCh stands for Tyagovaya Chast' (Motive/Traction Section/Group), and it relates to how ex-Soviet railroads are organized on the train operation side. All locomotives in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, etc have this reference somewhere on them.....granted in 99% of the cases it's not as fancy as on this diesel on the photo.

There are many Russian railfan sites where one can go and either type in the specific locomotive and see where it's assigned, or where a specific "traction group" is based.

Another two abbreviations that one might see are VChD and VCh. The former stands for "Vagonnoye Depo" (coach depot) and can be found on many passenger cars. Most of RZD sleepers that show up in Central and Western Europe will be marked off as belonging to VChD-XX (don't know the number), Moskva-Belorusskaya".

The latter abbreviation stands for "Vagonniy Uchastok" (Wagon Sector), and is found on most freight rolling stock in the form of "VCh-XX, YY Railway" where XX is a number, and YY is the name of specific Railway (i.e. Moscow, October, South-Western, Donetsk, etc).


GettingShort Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> McKey Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Thank you for the pictures GettingShort! Keep
> > these coming...
> >
> > Especially the RzD colored Ukrainian Lugansk /
> > Luhansk built 2Te116-1638 with its dynamic
> brake
> > radiators looked interesting this time. What is
> > scribbled to its side? Look almost like
> graffiti
> > but somehow I doubt it is.
>
>
> Good question. I don't know, TCh 1E or TCh 1Z no
> idea what that might refer to.

chs7-321 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Oh geez, those wacky Westerners..... :-P
>
> On the side of the 2TE116, it says "TCh-13", and
> is a reference to the "depot" that the locomotive
> is assigned to.
>
> TCh stands for Tyagovaya Chast' (Motive/Traction
> Section/Group), and it relates to how ex-Soviet
> railroads are organized on the train operation
> side. All locomotives in Russia, Ukraine,
> Belarus, etc have this reference somewhere on
> them.....granted in 99% of the cases it's not as
> fancy as on this diesel on the photo.
>
> There are many Russian railfan sites where one can
> go and either type in the specific locomotive and
> see where it's assigned, or where a specific
> "traction group" is based.
>
> Another two abbreviations that one might see are
> VChD and VCh. The former stands for "Vagonnoye
> Depo" (coach depot) and can be found on many
> passenger cars. Most of RZD sleepers that show up
> in Central and Western Europe will be marked off
> as belonging to VChD-XX (don't know the number),
> Moskva-Belorusskaya".
>
> The latter abbreviation stands for "Vagonniy
> Uchastok" (Wagon Sector), and is found on most
> freight rolling stock in the form of "VCh-XX, YY
> Railway" where XX is a number, and YY is the name
> of specific Railway (i.e. Moscow, October,
> South-Western, Donetsk, etc).
>
>
Thanks! I was hoping you would weigh in. I suspected it was something to do with depot allocation or sector allocation.

Heh, thanks for correcting! Russian is a hard language, even harder is to understand Russian thinking. The text I pictured was written neatly where any Westerners often find the classification info ;D

chs7-321 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Oh geez, those wacky Westerners..... :-P

McKey Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Heh, thanks for correcting! Russian is a hard
> language, even harder is to understand Russian
> thinking. The text I pictured was written neatly
> where any Westerners often find the classification
> info ;D
>
> chs7-321 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Oh geez, those wacky Westerners..... :-P


But I don't think Russian even comes close in that aspect to Finnish! ;)

As far as Russian thinking goes (I assume we're talking about overall here, not railway), it's hard even for Russians themselves to understand..... :-P

Yes, exactly what some of my Russian acquaintances tell me :)

chs7-321 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> As far as Russian thinking goes (I assume we're
> talking about overall here, not railway), it's
> hard even for Russians themselves to
> understand..... :-P

Those 2ТЭ-116s look big, but looks can be deceiving. Yesterday I was at Astrakhan-1, and a (pair) 2TE-116s were sitting in the station, waiting for an Electricka (commuter) train. They are wider, but in terms of length they are about the same as an SD-7, roughly the height of an F40PH. Not many Russian locomotives have MU, so they have, two unit locomotives for greater power.
Cheers,
Nick

NGotwalt Wrote:
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> Those 2ТЭ-116s look big, but looks can be
> deceiving. Yesterday I was at Astrakhan-1, and a
> (pair) 2TE-116s were sitting in the station,
> waiting for an Electricka (commuter) train. They
> are wider, but in terms of length they are about
> the same as an SD-7, roughly the height of an
> F40PH. Not many Russian locomotives have MU, so
> they have, two unit locomotives for greater
> power.
> Cheers,
> Nick

I agree with you. The 2ТЭ-116s look massive but they aren't that long. Slightly wider than the US loading gauge and fairly short, still the foo look tall but there again I think that might be an effect of their shape. A lot of it comes from their brutish primeval look.

Having taken 1 year of Russian in college, many moons ago, what I remember is this: the Cyrillic alphabet has more characters than the Roman, and each letter has one and only one sound. So spelling in Russian is essentially phonetic: no "to", two", and "too". But it is an inflected language, like Latin, with endings on nouns and verbs. Oh, and all the verbs are irregular!

JGFuller Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Having taken 1 year of Russian in college, many
> moons ago, what I remember is this: the Cyrillic
> alphabet has more characters than the Roman, and
> each letter has one and only one sound. So
> spelling in Russian is essentially phonetic: no
> "to", two", and "too". But it is an inflected
> language, like Latin, with endings on nouns and
> verbs. Oh, and all the verbs are irregular!

The overall Cyrillic alphabet probably has 10-15 more characters than the Latin one, but a bunch are not used in Russian (some are used in, say, the Cyrillic version of Serbo-Croatian, some have been phased out in 1917). The modern Russian alphabet has 33 letters (vs 26 of that of the modern English).

And yes, the nouns get modified according to the verb.....which makes trying to teach a non-Russian speaker Russian phrases kinda maddening....especially when they are trying to establish grammar patterns. ;)