Belgian Railways Class 13
class of 60 Belgian electric locomotives
The Class 13 are a type of mixed use 200 km/h (124 mph) multivoltage electric locomotive of type Traxis designed by Alstom in the late 1990s for the Belgian and Luxembourgish railways (CFL Class 3000).
The locomotives operate push-pull trains with coaches of type I11, as well as freight trains.
Since 2012, NMBS/SNCB assigned more and more locomotives to their freight subsidiary due to the introduction of the Class 18 into passenger service.
History
Background
At the beginning of the 1990s SNCB/NMBS had a requirement to renew its mainline locomotive fleet: it required fast high power passenger locomotives for intercity trains on lines between Ostend, Brussels, Liege and Eupen, as well as needing replacements for diesel locomotive classes 52, 53 and 54 which dated to the 1950s and were used on freight trains for the steel industry on the Athus-Meuse line and into Luxembourg. These requirements led to the decision to purchase a universal locomotive design. The design specifications included a minimum top speed of 200 kilometres per hour (120 mph) and capability to operate under 3 kV DC and 25 kV AC electrification.
Luxembourg state rail company CFL also had a locomotive fleet dating from the 1950/60s, including electric CFL 3600s and GM-EMD diesel engined locomotives CFL 1800. The company also planned to electrify its entire network, the majority at 25 kV AC, as well as 3 kV DC. In December 1992 CFL reached an agreement to jointly procure locomotives with NMBS/SNCB, with the Belgian company leading the procurement process.
The procurement specifications were published in March 1993, accepted bidders were listed in September 1993, with bids received in February 1994. On 22 December 1995 NMBS/SNCB and CFL made a joint order with ACEC-Transport (subsidiary of GEC-Alstom) for 80 units; Alstom's offer was costed at 140.5million Belgian francs per locomotive; NMBS/SNCB and CFL ordered 60 and 20 units respectively of identically specified locomotives, with deliveries beginning in 1998.
The public source identifies “Belgian Railways Class 13” as class of 60 Belgian electric locomotives. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Belgian, Railways and Class.
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This entry incorporates text from “Belgian Railways Class 13” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.