FS Class E.626

The E.626 series is an Italian electric locomotive series.

History

The E.626 series was the first unit locomotive class for the 3 kV DC system of the Italian State Railways. It was in 1926 given at Tecnomasio Italiano Brown Boveri in order and based on the prototype of the E.625 series. They were purchased for the carriage of freight trains and passenger trains. The E.625er were provided for the freight train that E.626er for passenger train service.

Use

The E.626 series lived up to expectations and was in use until 1999. Later, the E series was 626 deported because of not meeting the requirements Maximum speed in freight service. The series was throughout Italy in use, such as on the routes Mestre- Padua -Verona, Padua, Bologna and Udine- Tarvisio in the north down to the south to Sicily. On many routes it replaced the then still immature three-phase locomotives, the contact lines with multiple wires and correspondingly expensive pantograph required.

Technical Features

In the design of the chassis, it was decided for the wheel arrangement Bo'BoBo ' to achieve both good Kurvenläufigkeit and swerving free straight ahead, the middle driving axle pair was therefore fixedly mounted in the main frame. The E.626 series was considered to be extremely reliable, easily built and robust. There were four different versions, which differed in the achievable performance duration. At the last version compared to the first one at 500 kW higher performance could be achieved.

The E 626 in Yugoslavia

That remained after the Second World War in Yugoslavia, 17 copies were operated on the local 3- kV network to 1978 series E361.

The E.626 in Czechoslovakia

Four locomotives of the Italian series E.626 with atomic numbers 017, 019, 021 and 024 were located at the end of World War II on the territory of Czechoslovakia. After a long shut-down locomotives in 1951 by the Czechoslovak State Railways ( ČSD ) were taken. Three of the locomotives were worked up in the workshops Nymburk and Česká Třebová and rebuilt for operation below 1500 volts DC. The fourth locomotive E.626.024 served as a source of spare parts and was later scrapped.

With the numbers E 666 001 to E 666 003 the three locomotives were henceforth used on the electrified network in railway junction Prague. On May 15, 1962, the catenary voltage was raised in Prague net on the now established as a standard 3000 volts. Although the locomotives were originally built for this tension was no longer a reconversion. They were decommissioned in common with most other electric locomotives of the Prague network and scrapped.