Mongolia: More M62 on the mainline!
There is some very good news to report on our Mongolian trip in the summer of 2019 (May 25 - June 2):
First of all, the fact that the tour has already been confirmed to run.
Furthermore, we will see an increased volume of trains on Transmongol on this journey: Transit traffic between Russia and China has increased significantly, and so the Mongolian railway is also investing in new and almost new equipment:
3 factory-fresh 2TE25KM arrived in Mongolia from Russia shortly after the New Year, bringing the stock of this mighty diesel locomotives to 5.
However, as this growth is still far from sufficient to cope with the increase in traffic volume, other, already abandoned 2M62s were taken from the scrap yard, brought to the repairshop at Ulan Bataar, refurbished and are now running as 2M62MM.
Last new entry is the 2M62MM-033, which we see in the picture of our tour guide Temuulen at Ulan Bator main station - and was spotted by us 1 year ago on our winter trip as just a half locomotive shell at the Darkhan locomotive depot.
Allow us once again to note that we do not plan another main route tour in Mongolia in 2019: our summer tour will be the last trip of this kind to Mongolia for this year. In the autumn we will ply the various branch lines (among others the line to Choibalsan that is still equipped with semaphore signals), as well as the operationally challenging sections of the Transmongol through the Gobi Desert!
You can read the summer program here!
