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Tuesday, October 09, 2012

The Smallest Locomotive on the Globe


smallesttrainonglobe

PICTURE: Nordautomation, Tosho, Russia (1980’s)

Nordautomation Oy (www.nordautomation.fi)  is famous for projects within the mechanical wood processing industry and small bio-energy power plants.

The company was migrated to the Swedish corporation Carl Bennet Ab / Lifco (www.lifco.se) in 1999. The administration, marketing, construction and project management is located in Kristiinankaupunki, and the production unit in Alajarvi, Finland.

Nordautomation has experience from project deliveries to Finland, the Baltic countries, Scandinavia, Russia, etc. The customers in Finland are for example Algol, Finnforest, Stora Enso, UPM, Vapo etc.

Nordautomation has delivered several remarkable sawmill projects to USSR in the 70’s and the 80’s, and later to Russia.

The company constructed and manufactured ”the smallest locomotives in the world” in the 80’s to the biggest railway wagon repair shop in Tosho in USSR, close to St. Petersburg. It was planned to later build over 100 similar repair shops, but those plans lapsed, although there probably still exists the same need for reparation of the wagons.

The starting point for this construction was the miserable condition of the Russian cargo wagons (about 1,3 million wagons), and that is why Nordautomation decided, that the best gripping surface of the wagons that need to be repaired, is the massive bogey made of cast iron.

- Furthermore we concluded that the transfer devices aren’t the most suitable for moving under the wagons because of brake levers and other hanging stuff you can find there. That is why we didn’t make similar transfer locomotives as the other well known companies that participated in the offer competition, Managing Director Pauli Ojala says.

The locomotive Nordautomation made was symmetric (length 2 m, width 20 cm, height 11 cm), and you can move it under the bogey from both directions, at which time the other transfer hasp slides under the bogey and automatically gets locked to the bogey, which guarantees that you safely can remove and stop it. It is also possible to pull just the wagon bogey instead of the whole train with the locomotive.

For more information, contact:
Pauli Ojala
Managing Director
pauli.ojala (at) nordautomation.fi
Nordautomation Oy
Hevoshaantie 5
64100 Kristiinankaupunki
Tel. +358 (0)20 7616 200











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