Heaviest Trains
Brazil has some of the heaviest iron ore trains in the world, and these run on the metre gauge track of the EFVM railway, these trains are pulled by a fleet of specially built locomotives that utilize 4-axle trucks or two pairs of 2-axle trucks with span bolsters. The first model of locomotive built specially for this duty was the DDM45, created by EMD in the 1970. 83 examples were delivered to the EFVM. Later, in the early 1990s the EGVM also ordered BB40-8M models from General Electric and continues to order further BB40-9W models, also from GE.
However, a major power shortage occurred in 2002 across the Brazilian narrow-gauge systems. As new locomotives would be too expensive for many railways, or would take to long to be delivered for others, the solution was to buy second-hand standard gauge locomotives and fit them with new metre gauge bogies. The number of axles was increased to keep within the axle load limit as well as due to limitations with tractive effort output from the smaller meter-gauge traction motors.
Read more about this topic: Rail Transport In Brazil
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