The South African Railways Class 10E2 of 1989 is an electric locomotive. In 1989 and 1990, the South African Railways placed twenty-five Class 10E2 electric locomotives with a Co-Co wheel arrangement in mainline service.South African Railways Index and Diagrams Electric and Diesel Locomotives, 610mm and 1065mm Gauges, Ref LXD 14/1/100/20, 28 January 1975, as amended

Manufacturer

The 3 kV DC Class 10E2 electric locomotive was designed for the South African Railways (SAR) by

Toshiba , commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, ...

and built by Union Carriage and Wagon (UCW) in Nigel, Transvaal. Toshiba of Japan supplied the electrical equipment while UCW was responsible for the mechanical components and assembly. UCW delivered twenty-five locomotives to the SAR in 1989 and 1990, numbered in the range from to . The company did not allocate builder’s numbers to the locomotives it built for the SAR, but used the SAR unit numbers for their record keeping.

Characteristics

The Class 10E2 was introduced as a standard 3 kV DC heavy goods locomotive. With a continuous power rating of , four Class 10E2 locomotives are capable of performing the same work as six Class 6E1.

Brakes

The locomotive makes use of either regenerative or rheostatic braking, as the situation demands. Both traction and electric braking power are continuously variable, with the electric braking optimised to such an extent that maximum use will be made of the regenerative braking capacity of the network, with the ability to automatically change over to rheostatic braking whenever the overhead supply system becomes non-receptive. The entire fleet of the Class 10E family of electric locomotives is equipped with electronic chopper control, which is smoother in comparison to the rheostatic resistance control which was used in the Classes 1E to 6E1 electric locomotives.Jane's Train Recognition Guide

Bogies

The Class 10E2 was built with sophisticated traction linkages on the bogies. Together with the locomotive's electronic wheel-slip detection system, these traction struts, mounted between the linkages on the bogies and the locomotive body and colloquially referred to as grasshopper legs, ensure the maximum transfer of power to the rails without causing wheel-slip by reducing the adhesion of the leading bogie and increasing that of the trailing bogie by as much as 15% upon starting.

Orientation

These dual cab locomotives have a roof access ladder on one side only, just to the right of the cab access door. The roof access ladder end is marked as the no. 2 end.

Identifying features

In visual appearance, the Class 10E2 can be distinguished from the Class 10E by the roof ends and the sills. The Class 10E has riffled roof ends and parts of the sill protrude slightly past the bottom edge of the body sides. The Class 10E2 has smooth unriffled roof ends and no part of the sill protrudes past the bottom edge of the body sides.

Service

The Class 10E2 is mainly employed to haul ore trains on the line between Kimberley and

Hotazel Hotazel is a town in John Taolo Gaetsewe District Municipality in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. The town serves the manganese Manganese is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Mn and atomic number 25. It is ...

in the Northern Cape. It also works between Kimberley and the Witwatersrand. Most were initially shedded at Kaserne near Johannesburg with several also at Beaconsfield near Kimberley. In 1998, a number of Spoornet's electric locomotives and most of their Class 38-000 electro-diesel locomotives were sold to Maquarie-GETX (General Electric Financing) and leased back to Spoornet for a ten-year period which was to expire in 2008. Of the Class 10E2, numbers to were later also included in this leasing deal.

Liveries

All the Class 10E2 locomotives were delivered in the SAR red oxide livery with signal red buffer beams and cowcatchers and a yellow V stripe on the ends, folded over to a horizontal stripe below the side windows. The number plates on the sides were mounted without the traditional three-stripe yellow wings. In the late 1990s many were repainted in the Spoornet blue livery with outline numbers on the long hood sides. After 2008 in the

Transnet Freight Rail Transnet Freight Rail is a South African rail transport company, formerly known as Spoornet. It was part of the South African Railways and Harbours Administration, a state-controlled organisation that employed hundreds of thousands of people ...

(TFR) era, several received the TFR red, green and yellow livery.Soul of A Railway, System 7, Western Transvaal, based in Johannesburg, Part 9. South-Eastwards as far as Volksrust (2nd part) by Les Pivnic. Caption 4.
(Accessed on 11 April 2017) On Class 10E2 units which were repainted in Transnet Freight Rail livery from c. 2011, the locomotive numbers are displayed as, for example, either "E10110" or "E10 125", instead of the earlier .

Illustration

File:SAR Class 10E2 10-124 Blue.JPG, No. 10-124 in Spoornet blue livery with outline numbers at Beaconsfield, 18 September 2009 File:Class 10E2 10-104.JPG, No. 10-104 in Transnet Freight Rail livery, inscribed "E10 104", Beaconsfield, Kimberley, 24 May 2013 File:Class 10E2 10-125.JPG, No. 10-125 in Transnet Freight Rail livery, inscribed "E10125", Warrenton, Northern Cape, 21 May 2013

References

{{Locomotives of South Africa 3110 Co-Co locomotives Union Carriage & Wagon locomotives Toshiba locomotives Cape gauge railway locomotives Railway locomotives introduced in 1989 1989 in South Africa