Not all the work we do involves manufacturing piston rings from modern base materials and applying chrome ceramic coatings to them, far from it…
We regularly work with the Austrian Society for Railway History (ÖGEG), and supplied them with a set of rings earlier this year for one of their locomotives which is nearly 80 years old. Here is what they told us about this project.
“Our locomotive has been built in 1944 by company Franco-Belge in occupied France as a part of the German war effort. These locomotives were built to a war standardization program intended to build standardized locomotive types with minimized use of materials and work. Accordingly these locomotives were kept very simple and also were designed to work on temporary light railway tracks and were built for different gauges from 600 mm to even 1435 mm.
At the end of WWII, our locomotive with some others of this type found itself in Austria, with members of its class spread all over Europe and examples now preserved in Austria, France and even the UK.
The Austrian Federal Railways modified four locomotives of this type to tender locomotives and renamed these locomotives to series from 699.0 to 699.1. During its working life our locomotive 699.103 served on the now closed Carinthian narrow gauge railway line Völkermarkt-Kühnsdorf to Eisenkappel and after closure of this line was transferred to the Upper Austrian Steyr Velley line, where it was, due to its low speed but high tractive effort mainly used for freight line traffic.
After this narrow gauge line was also closed in 1982 after a land slide, the locomotive was waiting for an uncertain future in the loco shed in Gartsen. In 1984 the Austrian Society for Railway History (ÖGEG) managed to take over a 17 km long part of the Steyr Valley Line from Steyr to Grünburg and to purchase 3 of the locomotives used in the final years of pre-preservation operation of the line.
In 1985 preservation service was established and locomotive 699.103 was recommissioned for operation on the Steyr Valley Railway line. After it’s second general overhaul in preservation era completed in 2021 locomotive 699.103 is now ready to pull happy guests on special trains again.
We are very happy with the support given to us by QIN on this project.”
More information can be found on their website: www.oegeg.at and they can also be followed on FaceBook.
Marine engine piston rings, locomotive piston rings, industrial piston rings, steam turbine sealing rings, power plant engine piston rings: we cover all these applications here at QIN across a bore range which extends from 160mm up to 600mm.
QIN’s support is always just a phone call or an email away.
Contact us now at websales@q-in.eu to find out more.
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