European Railroad Discussion > 0nly one careful owner

Colas start disposing of their class 70s
https://www.mascus.co.uk/construction/used-railroad-maintanence-equipment/other-locomotive-general-electrique-class-70/ufwmncog.html

Seven years old and they're already disposing of them?

70804 apparently hasn't been used in a long time.

PHall Wrote:
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> Seven years old and they're already disposing of
> them?

Oddball locomotive, orphaned now that GETS was sold to Wabtec. There was a single demonstrator running around mainland Europe. Besides Colas and Freightliner in Great Britain the only other purchaser was TCDD the Turkish National Railway. Freightliner should buy them if the price is low enough and then part them out to keep their own Class 70s running. Inspite of being older than the Colas bunch, I doubt that they have individually more than 5 or 6 years of cummulative running time, as when they suffer a mechanically failure, waiting 6 months for parts wasn't unusual.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/01/21 06:17 by SOO6617.

I believe it is only 70801 to 70804 which are for sale. 70801 was originally assembled in Turkey as a demonstrator. 70804 is stored at Nottingham Eastcroft depot.

Capable locomotives... arguably too capable for Colas' traffic i.e. there's nothing really heavy haul in their portfolio...

I thought Colas acquired the 70s as part of their effort to secure Network Rail infrastructure renewal contracts, NR didn't want to rely on superannuated locos prone to breakdown. So maybe they reason they can manage the infrastructure work with a reduced mix of 56s, 66s and 70s.