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The 'Douro Valley' steam train is back

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    July 2006
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The 'Douro Valley' steam train is back
Posted by Mario_v on Tuesday, May 31, 2016 8:43 AM

Hello all ;

 

After an hiatus of some 5 years without stream traction (a diesel with an historic paint scheme did the job), the historic train that follows the Douro valley line (of Port wine fame), between Régua and Tua, in northern pPortugal just got its engine back.

The locomotive, tender engine 0186, built by  Henschell & Sohn of Kassel, Germany, in 1924, has beeen completely restored, and its original boiler replaced by a new one that burns  diesel fuel instead of coal (strange for me to imagine the engine reaching the diesel pump witn the engineer yelling 'fill'er up, son !'), and it looks like as it did came out of the factory yesterday (and also works as a Swiss watch).

The following 'vignetes' show the engine running in break in runs and in 'engineer clases' in Oporto's belt line, a route thta's actually 14 years yiounger than the loco

 

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