Mongolian summer: ready to go!
Just a few days to go and we will enjoy another tour to Mongolia (sold out again)! All preparations are done, the UAZ polished and ready for action.
We received quite a lot of encouraging news from the Mongolian railways over the last weeks:
4 Chinese diesel locomotives that have been idling on a privately operated branch line in Mongolia, have been leased by the Mongolian Railway and operate now on the challenging sections of the Gobi desert line where the electronics of the Russian 2TE116UM/UD fail regularly. Those Russian locomotives have now been transferred to the Northern sections.
Due a sudden hike in transport needs on the transit route between Russia and China the railways needs virtually every locomotive it can make operational to run all trains - something which is not possible all the time and results even in freight trains being "stranded" without a diesel locomotive somewhere along the transit route.
In order to fight the locomotive shortage, the railways have ordered a new batch of 2TE25KM from Russia, as well as the short-term leasing of second hand 2TE116.
We hope to benefit from the increased traffic levels on our September tour (seats are still available) - you may read all tour details here.
It was a bit colder than in summer or autumn on our winter trip in February this year when the modernised UMM001 hauled its passenger train through Emeelt:
