In 1969 the South African Railways placed twenty class 6E1 electric locomotives into service. The new prototypes were of the 3kV power class with a Bo-Bo wheel arrangement and traction strut bogies. The design would ultimately prove itself successful becoming the backbone of the 3kV network for nearly four decades.
In total, 959 units were produced in eleven different batches seeing service throughout the entire country. Today only a dozen operable examples are still used in the Western Cape. Allocated to PRASA they operate the long-distance passenger trains between Cape Town and Beaufort West.
These locomotives were locally produced by Union Carriage and Wagon with GEC providing the components. This footage is limited to the Shosholoza Meyl and Premier Classe operated by the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa.
I've introduced a new TV-Safe Border system after viewers informed me that many of the captions and titles were disappearing off-screen. Especially when being viewed from television set which of course has a different aspect ratio to most computer monitors.
3 авг 2019
