South African Class 20E

The South African Class 20E of 2013 is a South African electric locomotive from the Transnet Freight Rail era.

In early August 2013 the first of ninety-five Class 20E dual-voltage electric locomotives for Transnet Freight Rail was lowered onto its bogies for the first time.^[1] Ten of these locomotives were built by the Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Company in China while the rest were built locally.^[2]

Manufacturer

The first ten of ninety-five 3 kV DC and 25 kV AC dual voltage Class 20E electric locomotives for Transnet Freight Rail were built in China by Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Company, a subsidiary of the China South Locomotive and Rolling Stock Corporation (CSR), China's leading train manufacturer.^[1] The roll-out ceremony of the first locomotive, no. 20-001, took place at the factory in Changsha in central China's Hunan Province on 20 August 2013.^[2]

The contract marked Zhuzhou’s largest single foreign order of electric locomotives to date and made provision for the company to export electric locomotive manufacturing technologies to South Africa to enable a local production ratio of more than 60 percent. The first two of these locomotives, no. 20-002 and 20-003, were landed at Durban Harbour on 14 November 2013. Three more, no. 20-001, 20-004 and 20-005, were landed on 18 December 2013.^[3]

Of the remaining eighty-five locomotives, numbers 20-011 to 20-025 were assembled by Transnet Engineering at Koedoespoort from Chinese-built kits and were all in service by end of September 2014.^[4][5]

The rest of the order has greater local content and was built in South Africa by a consortium composed of CSR Zhuzhou and the South African Black Economic Empowerment company Matsetse Basadi.^[1] The first of these, no. 20-026, was in service by late September 2014.^[5]

Characteristics

The locomotive body is a welded monocoque design, constructed of steel plates and profiled members, that has a compressive strength of 4.45 meganewtons (1,000,000 pounds-force) and a tensile strength of 4 meganewtons (900,000 pounds-force).^[6]

The Class 20E has a single cab and a gangway along the centre of the locomotive. It is equipped with a wireless data transmission system which can send the locomotive operation status, fault data and energy consumption data via GSM and Wi-Fi to a trackside station for analysis. It is also equipped with an axle temperature alarm device, fire alarm system, closed-circuit television (CCTV) system, wheel flange lubricating device and, as personnel safety measure, high voltage protective interlocking devices. The AC traction motors are powered through insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) control.^[6]

As on the dual voltage Class 19E, the main electric circuit is automatically selected in either AC or DC mode, based on the voltage of the overhead contact wire feeding the locomotive. To facilitate automatic trouble-free transition on the run, the locomotive is equipped with onboard voltage detectors, while the overhead wire is equipped with two wooden isolators and a 3 metres (10 feet) length of neutral wire to separate the AC and DC feed. The neutral section is connected to the rails, which serve as the return conductor on electrified lines.^[6]

The transition process requires that the locomotive be switched off automatically before it reaches the isolators and the unpowered overhead wire section, and automatically restarted after exiting from under the unpowered wire. This is done by a pair of track magnets, one on either side of the neutral overhead wire and spaced 45 metres (148 feet) apart. The two magnets are mounted with their polarities reversed in relation to each other and they activate a magnetic relay, located behind the cowcatcher of the locomotive, to do the switching off and restarting.^[6]

Under 25 kV AC/50Hz line voltage the electric system is designed to operate at a maximum of 31 kV and a minimum of 17 kV, while uder 3 kV DC it is designed to operate at a maximum of 4 kV and a minimum of 2 kV.^[6][7]

The locomotive has regenerative and rheostatic braking, a maximum speed of 100km/h and is equipped with low-speed controls. With radio frequency distributed power (RFDP) technology the units are able to work mid-train in lengthy wagon consists.^[8] A Class 20E unit can also be used as the leading locomotive in multi-unit operation with diesel-electric locomotives.^[6]

Service

Following testing, the first of the Chinese-built lococomotives entered service on the manganese ore line between Sishen and Port Elizabeth via Kimberley, De Aar and Noupoort in March 2014.^[1]

Two class 20Es, numbers 20-031 and 20-032, were selected to be used on the Blue Train and were painted in a blue livery. In Blue Train service they replaced, early in 2015, the previously used Class 18Es on the DC lines and the Class 7Es on the AC lines country-wide.

Sides illustrated

The following pictures were all taken while the second batch of locomotives to arrive in South Africa were being offloaded from the floating crane "Indlovu" at O Shed in Durban Harbour on 18 December 2013.

• 

  No. 20-004 and 20-005

• 

  No. 20-001

• 

  No. 20-004

See also

• Electric locomotive numbering and classification
• List of South African locomotive classes
• South African locomotive history

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: South African Class 20E

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