The European Railway Picture Gallery

Picture of the Month - April 1997

Photo by Janos Ero (Janos.Ero@cern.ch)

In July 1996 the 150th anniversary of Hungarian railways was celebrated with a big locomotive show in Budapest. Many steam locomotives were present, but also museum diesel locomotives and railcars and more modern rolling stock.

The locomotive of MÁV class M61 was one of the museum diesel locomotives. The first locomotives of this class entered service in 1963, and a small number is still in service. The design of these locomotives is from EMD in the United States, in Europe they were built by NOHAB in Sweden and AFC in Belgium. Similar locomotives have been delivered to several European countries, including Norway (class Di.3), Denmark (MV, MX and MY), Belgium (52-54) and Luxemburg (1600).

The locomotive on the picture (M61 004) is in its original livery. Just the herald on the nose is different, originally it was a bright red star. In total 20 of these locomotives have been delivered to MÁV. They have a power of 1433kW and a maximum speed of 105km/h. Their last depot (where they are still based) is Tapolca, from where they operate trains up the north side of Lake Balaton. Four of the class have been adapted with electrical train heating, in order to operate passenger trains now that MÁV has stopped using steam heating.

Photo by Janos Ero (Janos.Ero@cern.ch)
Scan by Marco van Uden (marco@nikhef.nl)