Seeing red

A few months back I posted about Swiss Railways' new electric shunter -- the Stadler Ee922:


A delightfully chunky-looking thing, the first production model proved remarkably trouble-free so the remaining twenty engines in the order rolled off the production line virtually unchanged.


They've now spread themselves around Switzerland's main railway junctions and are doing sterling work as station pilots and passenger shunting engines.


While shunting has almost disappeared in Britain, the Swiss need it for several reasons: firstly because unlike us they haven't abandoned traditional rakes of locomotive-hauled coaches, the length of which can be adjusted to match demand; secondly because Switzerland is a railway junction for Europe where locomotives arrive that operate on several different types of electrical power: as often as not, a locomotive has to be shunted off and a different one put on before the train can continue its journey.


These multi-voltage Stadlers shunters can easily cope with the full range of electrical power systems, and, incidentally, they can also haul in their own right -- up to 120kph, which is a rather decent achievement.


So successful have these been in such a short space of time, that a new variant has now been ordered -- a combined diesel and multi-voltage electric shunter, intended for freight rather than passenger work. I've seen an image and it looks absolutely nothing like this mock-up by a fellow rail geek:


But you're gonna have to contain yourself because the first one won't be delivered until 2012.

So let's end with the original Stadler, but whereas they are probably the reddest engines I have ever seen, the livery on this one has been manipulated by a geek:


I rather like that, actually.

Very civilised.