Photo of the Week: Narrow-gauge Freight on the Lillafüred Forestry Railway

The D02-508 is a class Mk48 diesel-hydraulic locomotive that serves on the 76-cm-gauge Lillafüred Forest Railway (Lillafüredi Erdei Vasút). Though freight service is discontinued and only tourist excursion trains are operated on the two-line network building trains need some goods cars and therefore sometimes train enthusiasts can organize colourful photo charters with them. On this occasion the Mk48 pulled the freight and the photographers travelled in a separate train hauled by a class C50 small diesel locomotive:

Photo of the Week: Small Locomotive, Big Use

The SBB Cargo Eem 923 027-7 is a dual-mode (diesel+electric, 15 kV 16.7 Hz+25 kV 50 Hz AC) light freight locomotive manufactured by Stadler Rail (Bussnang, Switzerland). A total number of 30 were built in 2011-2012 and their duties include regional freight trains and light shunting. This example was photographed at the Bern-Lötschberg-Simplonbahn's Spiez station. The versatile little locomotives have a maximum speed of 100 km/h and a power output of 1500 kW on electric and 360 kW on diesel power.

The Situation of Train Travel in Hungary

Currently, Hungary is going through gradual release after a semi-serious lockdown state, however, some restrictions are broken down more difficultly than others. Similarly to some other East-Central-Europe states, Hungary managed to cancel most of the capabilities of the Covid-19 virus to spread and the only major concern is the infection of many hospital workers and the internal spreading of the infection across different parts of the hospital, resulting in patients of other illnesses to be returning home infected; often to homes for the elderly or homeless shelters. Because of the very low level of infections in the outside world, the government's primary concern is the re-introduction of the virus through foreign visitors, so for any Hungarians returning from abroad a two-week quarantine at home is ordered.

Daily commuting is possible to some of the neighbouring states like Austria (without limits) or Slovakia (to 30 km distance from the border station). Other international travel is mostly prohibited or requires quarantine on both entry to the foreign country and re-entry home. Five designated states can have free business trips.

Photo of the Week: CFF Viseu

CFF Viseu de Sus is a narrow-gauge forestry railway situated in Northern Romania, in the Carpathian Mountains. In the warm half of the year, every weekend tourist steam trains take over the valley of the Vaser river and there are some occasional winter runnings as well. On weekends the railway still serves the original purpose, transporting lumber and lumberjacks. The excursion trains visit about half the length of the railway from Viseu to Paltin. Most steam locomotives used were at Resita or Reghin in Romania as a variant of the Hungarian MÁVAG class 490 design.

• Additional photos of steam locomotive trains in Romania