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Tuesday 6 August 2019

Retro Liveries of the Locomotives of the Hungarian State Railways

Retro is a term often used in Eastern and Central Europe for things that are left behind from the end of the 20th century, or, in an increasing number of cases, have been recreated to resemble the typical looks of those things. Unlike 'old', retro doesn't imply that the thing is incapable of doing its job anymore, just identifies it as something which has a unique style to it because of the year it was made.
When talking about trains, we must differentiate between retro vehicles and historic vehicles, both can mean locomotives, carriages or multiple units and railcars. Something is historic if it is kept in a museum or is only used on special occasions. They are often privately owned or belong to an identity separate from the railway companies that serve the usual traffic in the region. Retro, on the other hand, usually means a vehicle that still has some daily work to do and is actively used to earn revenue in ways which are not connected to the tool being older than the average stock. To put it straight: they carry passengers just like any other vehicle belonging to their operator or are used for daily freight or departmental trains. But they all wear a special livery that can turn back the wheel of time for the people who remember, force some good memories to resurface and add a significant bit to the class and mood of rail travel. In the UK this kind of repainting is often called a heritage livery.
The Hungarian network is not the only one to have retro trains, but the number of such vehicles has greatly increased recently and for the second year in a row, passenger operator MÁV-START has organized special Retro Weekends for enthusiasts and the general public to enjoy, thus bringing attention to the existence of these nice vehicles.
Bzmot 343 (117 343 in the current numbering scheme) is allocated to the MÁV-START depot at Balassagyarmat and wears the livery these tiny railcars had worn until the mid-90s refurbishment and engine replacement.



The two locomotives are almost identical, the front one is M40,114 (408 114) and the second one is M40,209 (408 209). Built by Ganz-MÁVAG between 1963 and 1970, this class of locomotive initially found itself at the head of push-pull commuter trains, then moved over to local freights, then to heavy shunting, and currently can be found on heavier-than-average local freight trains and special convoys like the crane train or the moving of special goods, like whole transformers. These two units are semi-privately owned by MÁV Nosztalgia Kft. and are members of different sub-classes.
The differences had been partly visual (see this image for comparison) and partly concerning a different kind of steam heating boiler used (Vapor-Hagenuk or Clayton makes).
The original livery of all versions was the pea-green with cream lines In the years of manufacture each modern MÁV locomotive got its own, attractive livery without any common colours or shapes used, to show the effort of introducing newer and newer motive power to the railway network of the country struggling with the complicated economics of socialism and to tell diesels and electrics apart from rusty old (and dull black painted) steam locomotives. Many classes even were manufactured for a span long enough to have two very much different original liveries. The second locomotive, M40,209 is showing off its distinctive orange, so-called transitional livery - see below for details.

408 224 (formerly, the M40,224), the proud of Hatvan depot is sporting todays standard MÁV livery for diesels with legacy engines (re-motorised locomotives have a grey top half added for differentiation). Therefore, strictly speaking, it is not a retro locomotive but still appeared on the first Retro Weekend as they only appear on passenger trains if there is absolutely nothing else to haul the train and even buses are unavailable and because the class M40 used to appear on the Székesfehérvár-Tapolca line on the Northern banks of Lake Balaton in this livery.

The V43,1001 (currently: 431 001) is a member of a class of 379 locomotives built according to the blueprints and license of Alsthom, Krupp, Krauss-Maffei, Brown-Boveri, Jeumont, Oerlikon, Schneider-Westinghouse, Siemens-Schuckert Werke, La Brugeoise et Nivelles, SFAG, ACEC and AEG and can safely say that is the worst locomotive ever produced on the globe. The French design of having a single, non-elastically-connected motor in each bogie together with the general locomotive design by Krupp doesn't work together and destroys even the best tracks laid under it and causes the whole chassis to rock and buckle like none other. The low power output and the severe electrical faults all add to the low esteem of these locomotives that every Hungarian engine driver is looking forward to getting finally rid of. Nevertheless, the locomotive built between 1963 and 1982 has an original livery with the two different kinds of blue and the lightning shapes on the sides that it is just pleasing to have a look at.

The Swedish company Nydqvist och Holm Aktiebolag (NoHAB), together with American engine maker General Motors produced 20 locomotives for Hungary in 1963-1964. The locomotives were manufactured in an attractive red livery with white stripes forming a winged railway wheel on the front and the traditional communist red star in the middle. The livery was really complicated to paint, and, as all Hungarian liveries of those days, it was unique to the class, in this case, the class M61. MÁV decided to make a uniform livery, and the first designs were applied to M61, M62 and M40 locomotives. The features were the light-grey underframe, bogies and roof, the orange chassis, the bright yellow pilot and distinctive, modernised MÁV logos on the sides. Even though these experiments paved the way to the design of the uniform MÁV livery of red/blue and yellow with dark-grey underframes, no insignia, the original theory was abandoned and the experimental locomotives remained unique. During the years of development of the final version of the uniform livery, many locomotives got a variant of the orange and light-grey livery, and the M61 Nohab locomotives remained to use the scheme until their scrapping or retrofitting to retro liveries, albeit with the colours available for the uniform (red) livery. This orange style, now worn by only two retro locomotives, M61,019 (one of the original demonstrators) and M40,209 (a locomotive that only resembles one of the originals), and is dubbed the transitional livery - the one that got rid of the unique liveries for all classes and helped develop the colour scheme that became emblematic in Central Europe and eventually served as the main idea for the development of uniform liveries for many other railways. Some of them are the Blonski for Slovakian ZSSK and the Najbrt for Czech ČD.

Wearing the current uniform livery, the former M62,089 is similarily appearing as a less-than-retro, but still not entirely usual participant, as the above-mentioned 408 224.

The Soviet-built class M62 locomotives originally appeared in a full crimson livery, but later delivery batches had the well-known moustache shape on their fronts. The class, specially developed for MÁV's needs but later also adopted by Czechoslovakian ČSD became a standard locomotive on the Soviet Railways as well.

One of the best-known Hungarian retro locomotives and the first one to be made was the M41 2143 (418 143), which now has a little bit sun-burnt and patchy paint job, but is still important for the railfans. The class, developed for long passenger trains travelling on light secondary lines has an axle load of only 16,5 tons, significantly less than mainline diesels, and even some smaller and less powerful shunters. It was developed by Ganz-MÁVAG using SEMT Pielstick engines and was built between 1972 and 1984. This one is the second - and best known - kind of unique livery before this class was also introduced to the uniform red and yellow livery, but there is another kind without the silver stripes, a darker crimson and a red star, that the first few locomotives received. A retro locomotive of that particular livery is currently being made.

Summary

The reason this article has been written is to provide a guide for wondering spectators of the many different photographs submitted by Hungarian and greatly appreciated foreign railfans of the recent events of the Retro Weekends at Lake Balaton.  I reckon that many readers may understand that these trains look old and are visually appealing but I hope to bring your attention to the importance of the stories behind the appearance of all these liveries. Many other countries (like the Czech Republic and Slovakia) have extensive fleets of retro locomotives that are also going to be introduced later on.
In the meantime, please welcome my little video on Youtube about the MÁV Retro Weekends:



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