SNCB Class 20

Class 20 is a class of electric locomotives operated by SNCB, the national railway of Belgium.

Prior to the introduction of the Class 13, Class 20 was the most powerful NMBS/SNCB electric locomotive class in Belgium, a distinction it held for 30 years. They commonly worked on Brussels - Luxembourg services, later sharing passenger duties with the CFL Class 3000s. Unusually for SNCB they are Co-Co locomotives.

History

The SNCB Class 20 was based on plans for a 7000 horsepower four system electric locomotive drawn up by SNCB in 1968. The four system requirement was later dropped and 15 of these locomotives, equipped to run only on 3000 volts DC, were ordered from BN in 1973. Production started in 1975 and an order for 10 more was placed with BN soon after the first one was delivered. Production ended in 1977.

There was no prototype built and given that this loco was the cutting edge technology in its day, that turned out to be a mistake. After a short time they started having problems and failures in service and it took SNCB about five years to sort them all out. The first problem area was the ACEC Type G transmission. They all had to be rebuilt with stronger gears and that fix solved the problem. Oddly enough, the type G transmission was the one part of the Class 20 that had been fully tested before entering service. The problem was that it was tested on locomotive 124.001/2401/2383 (all the same one) which had much less powerful traction motors. The other major problem was the electrical control system. Some major modifications were made over time and reliability greatly improved. Even after these changes they had to be driven gently for the rest of their service lives. They could still run at their top speed of 160 KmH (99 MPH) bit maximum acceleration was forbidden.

The SNCB Class 20 had three 'firsts' to its credit. It was the first pure direct current locomotive in the world to make 7,000 HP or anything close. It was also the first and only locomotive to use the ACEC Type G transmission. Finally, it was the first DC electric locomotive in the world to have thyristor control. Although the Class 20 had no predecessor it became the prototype for classes 11, 12, 21 and 27 which were much more reliable from the start based on what was learned from the Class 20's problems.

The first 23 Class 20s were painted dark green with silver lining. 2024 and 2025 were to be both the first and the last new SNCB locos that left the factory in yellow with blue bands for better visibility. All were repainted into blue with yellow stripes when they received their first major overhauls starting around 1990. Loco 2005 was repainted from blue back to green to run in the last two farewell trips for the class in 2014. The first farewell trip was pulled by 2024 in blue in May of 2013.

SNCB had to renumber a series of three older locomotives which were given the same class number when the four digit numbering system started in 1971. When the first order for these Class 20 locomotives was placed, the three Baume et Marpent locomotives from 1949, 2001, 2002 and 2003 became 2801, 2802 and 2803 in anticipation of the first locomotives of this, the second, Class 20.

Commercial service for Class 20 came to an end when 2003 pulled a passenger train from Luxembourg City to Brussels-Midi on the evening of 31 December 2013. Only a handful were still in service at this time, others being withdrawn after various failures or upon reaching the necessary kilometerage for their next overhaul.

Class 20 was intensively used in both freight and passenger service. Typical duties included international passenger trains from Brussels to Luxembourg. Freight duties included heavy trains from the port of Antwerp to places like the yards at Stockkem, Montzen, Gent and Zeebrugge. Later on they hauled double deck M5 and M6 coaches on peak hour trains. Until Class 13 arrived they were the only SNCB locos that could pull 1100 ton freight trains on the difficult line from Luxembourg to Brussels. Class 20 was not equipped to run in multiple. Multiple working with the class was tried with a driver in each locomotive but soon banned because the current demand of the pair caused problems in the electrical substations.

Over the years the Austrian firm of Roco made a series of models in HO scale of different Class 20s. Roco managed to make models of 15 (2002, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 2023, 2024 and 2025) of the 25 built. The last two were in yellow and the others split between green and blue. A limited edition of hand-crafted metal models was built by Math Models in Belgium of a few different numbers.

Three different Class 20s are being preserved. 2001 will go into the Trainworld Museum when it opens. 2005 in the original green color will be kept on the active list at least until the end of 2015 and 2021 was saved by the railway preservation group PFT-TSP.

References

^{[1] [2] [3]}

External links

• HLE 20

Wikimedia Commons has media related to SNCB Class 20.

1. ↑ Schenkel, Jean-Pierre; Delie, Max (1988). Locomotives Éléctriques. Brussels, Belgium: G. Blanchart & Cie. ISBN 2-87202-004-7. 
2. ↑ Haydock, David (2012). Benelux Railways (sixth ed.). Sheffield, England: Platform 5 Publishing. ISBN 978 1 902336 96 1. 
3. ↑ Various issues of En Lignes and Journal du Chemin de Fer (Belgium).  Missing or empty |title= (help)