Exhibit description

Passenger diesel locomotive TEP70-0007

Pilot lot

In 1973–1978 the Kolomna plant produced a pilot lot of seven TEP70 series diesel locomotives, No. 0001–0007. They used a dense arrangement of equipment with roof-mounted cooling device blocks, one of which was located directly above the diesel engine.

After testing, the plant significantly redesigned the locomotive design. Due to the low reliability of the D49 diesel engines of the first years of production, it was necessary to remove cylinder sets quite often, which turned out to be labor-intensive. Because of this, on subsequent TEP70 series diesel locomotives, instead of a refrigerator with roof-mounted blocks, a more traditional cooling device design was used. The entire locomotive body was redesigned, the length of which increased by almost one and a half meters.

The undercarriage of the locomotive was significantly changed: if the experimental TEP70s were equipped with bogies that were generally similar to those used on the TEP60, then later on new locomotives were equipped with a design with one-way torque transmission using a cardan shaft connected to the gear wheel by elastic couplings. As a result, the TEP70 diesel locomotives from No. 0008 onwards differed significantly from the first seven experimental machines of this series.

Serial production

In the 1980s TEP70 diesel locomotives were delivered from the factory to the Alma-Ata, Belarusian, Central Asian, October, Baltic and Southern railways. In the early 2000s they were mainly shipped from construction to the Volga, Sverdlovsk, Northern, Moscow and South-Eastern, as well as to the Kaliningrad, Gorky and Far Eastern railways.

Museum specimen

The TEP70-0007 diesel locomotive presented in the museum, factory number 1740, was built in 1977 as part of an experimental batch. After testing in the late 1970s on the Belarusian Railway, this locomotive, being an experimental model, did not work in passenger traffic. In 1982 it was transferred to the track service of the October Railway, where it was used for various economic work for a long time. It entered the museum from the track machine station PMS-28 Gory of the October Railway in 1994

Historical context

The development of diesel engine manufacturing was moving towards the creation of four-stroke engines, which were more advanced and economical than two-stroke engines. One of the main developers of the new engines was the Kolomna Diesel Locomotive Plant named after V. V. Kuibyshev. They created a line of four-stroke 16- and 20-cylinder turbocharged engines of the ChN26/26 type with a capacity of 3,000 to 6,000 hp.

According to the new assignment from the Ministry of Railways, the plant was to create a passenger diesel locomotive with an axle arrangement of 3₀-3₀, that is, three leading axles in each bogie. It was to be equipped with a diesel engine with a capacity of 4,000 hp and have a design speed of 160 km/h.

The TEP70-0005 diesel locomotive also passed thermal engineering tests on the test ring of the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Railway Transport (VNIIZhT) and dynamic tests on the Belorechenskaya — Maykop section of the North Caucasian Railway. The locomotives were used to test a new type of electric transmission, control and regulation systems, power and auxiliary equipment.