Industrial / industrial 0-8-0 Locomotives in Russia

Class 2501 (Locobase 6813)

Data from the table presented on pages 416, 417 of the Groupe VI. - GTnie civil. - Moyens de transport. DeuxiFme partie. Classes 32 (Tome I), part of the series of Rapports du Jury Internationale of the Exposition Unverselle Internationale de 1900 Paris Exposition, hosted on the website of Le Conservatoire numTrique des Arts & MTtiers ([], Accessed 21 August 2005).

This little eight-coupled had a reasonable balance of boiler and grate and enough cross-section to steam reasonably freely. The jury report doesn't indicate how many of these pocket freight haulers were built.

Class PT-4 (Locobase 20619)

Data from "C2 Class, 28 Tonne Locomotive - Technical Data", C2 Project website at [], last accessed 4 August 2019. PT-4 production beginning in 1947:

Country Builder Class Years Quantity

Russia Vortinsk VP-1, VP-2, VP-4 1947-1959 2,300

Finland Tampella PT-4, KF-4 1946-1952 342

Finland Lokomo PT-4, KF-4 1946-1952 253

Czech Skoda KC-4 1949-1952 424

Hungary MAVAG KV-4 1950-1955 240

Poland Chraznow KP-4 1950-1959 901

The C2 Project's website contains a good history of this locomotive's design. As Stalin's push to build a world-rivalling heavy industry (at great human and material expense) gained momentum, it outstripped the existing supply of industrial locomotives to run on 750 or 762 mm gauge track. A standard 8-coupled, all-adhesion tank engine design appeared and went into production at Kolomna in 1930 as Class 159. Over 1,000 emerged in eleven years from four factories, but "the Class 159 was not a great success. In particular steaming was poor and fuel consumption high."

Concluding that evaporative heating and superheater surface areas were too small, Kolomna presented the P24 as a corrective. The side tanks were gone, a larger tender trailed a bigger locomotive. But the June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union by the Third Reich stopped production at nine.

After World War II, the need for such locomotives was, if anything, even more urgent given the widespread destruction of Eastern European rail networks. The P24 design was revived, mildly updated, and produced in the thousands between 1947 and 1959. Its intended duty couldn't have been more obvious. Maximum speed topped out at 35 kph (22 mph) limited as much by driver diameter as anything else. The steam dome and sand box were encased in a relatively massive bread bin casing, large piston valves fed the cylinders, an air compressor suitable for mainline 5-foot gauge engines dominated the left side of the smokebox. Large spotlight head lamps (two side-by-side on the buffer beam and one on a strut ahead of the firebox) and a large cold-weather cab protected the crew.

In addition to the 81 C2s exported to China by Poland's Chraznow, the Chinese put the design into production in 1958. Total output came to about 1,000.

Project C2's