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Welcome to Swedish Malmbana Visions Page! To choose the subject please click first the tile below. You can return to this menu any time by clicking the "Top of the page" -link. |
 Created for 4rail.net by Ilkka Siissalo, Gerard J. Putz, Nick Slocombe and John McKey. Pictures by Ilkka Siissalo, Nick Slocombe, Gerard J. Putz and John McKey.  |
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 Snowsheds on the mountain sides were and still are used to keep the danger of avalanche away, or just to keep the steel wheels rolling througout the year. |
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| Heavy Ore Railroading in the Swedish and Norwegian North |
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Northern Sweden is a scene of heaviest freight railroading in the whole Europe. While this may not seem much by the American standards, is still challenges the designers who plan the technology for the operations. Most of the freights are iron and other ore / pellet transportations, working 24 / 7 around the year. In summer the conditions are close to optimal (except for the mosquitos and other flying bugs) and there is light literally around the clock, even at night. But when you operate in the winter, you end up with the opposites: it is always dark with temperatures falling as low as -40 degrees centigrade and the wind howling along the sides of the mountains. While the snow sheds and fences try to keep most of the snow away, there is still plenty for the locomotives to push through and rotaries to plow away. Picture above by Nick Slocombe, below by John McKey. More on Malmbana Theme Pages... |
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| Most of the locomotion today is provided by heavy IORE electric locomotives built by Bombardier and operated by LKAB's (Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolaget) subsidiary MTAB (Malmtransport Aktiebolaget). The type IORE comes from "Iron ORE". The locomotives run in pairs, semi permanently coupled together between the overhauls. While the pairs originally were with the following numbers, now it looks like the ones that were finished first from service are coupled together. There is nothing wrong with this approach and this even makes the operation more interesting to trainspotters! Pictures by John McKey. |
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The IORE are custom built for the purpose, although similar locomotives can also be found in China. One of the features is rugged body shell with sometimes even 5 cm (nearly 2") thick nose, bogies and several other sections. This is needed for the heavy train operations and it also provides extra protection in case of an accident (which fortunately has not happened). Special measures are needed to transmit the pulling power from bogies to the body and forward to the SA3 type couplers. Below a picture of a quill drive and the SA3 coupler. Pictures by John McKey. |
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| Heavy Dm3 Pulling Ore Cars in the Swedish and Norwegian North |
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| Before the arrival of the heavy IORE locomotives the ore trains were hauled exclusively by the symphatetic Dm3 locos. They are still around and working well in daily traffic, as the world seems to be incredibly hungry in the need of magnetite iron. While the Dm3 can only pull half as many ore cars across the mountains as the larger IORE locos, they still provide heavier force to take the ore cars across the mountains than most today's heavy electric locomotives. Above and blow the Dm3 are pulling a string of older hoppers in mountains of Abisco. The upper trains is loaded, while the train below is returning from Narvik with a string of empties. More on Malmbana Theme Pages... |
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| Happy gathering of the Dm3 at Kiruna locoworks. Ilkka and Sanna were lucky enough to be in place at the summer of 2009, when the northern part (north of Kiruna) of the Malmbana was closed for upgrades to 30 ton axle weight. While this is everyday weight in U.S., for Europe this makes an unusually heavy line. Pictures by Ilkka Siissalo. |
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| The heavy wheels just keep rolling. In the pictures some of the Dm3 units Sigfrid and Dennewitz are in Luleå, where the ore is either processed into heavy slabs of steel or offloaded to ore carrier ships. Dennewitz above will take the hoppers back to mines around the Gällivare while Sigfrid is waiting in reserve next to Green Cargo loco works. More on Dm3 Locomotives Theme Page... Pictures by John Mckey. |
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