"Lunch Break Special".

Tale of a typical freight




























There is nothing facny or really extra ordinary about this train. It is not a de luxe express, to please the sales people and make on lookers envy. It is just a typical daily freight making a bit of yeoman service. What makes it sort of interesting is the fact that it is of a breed slowly vanishing, replaced by solid unit trains for a single but large customer. It is a general freight train, though much of tonnage it hauls are made by forestry products, sheets of plywood, boards of woods, woodchips. But it also hauls oil needed to heat the boilers of towns power station to provide heating to the homes, stores and plants in the areas. Also using the train is occational shipments of everything from scrapped automobiles to telephone masts made by the towns largest private employee, WIBE.

Though there are a number of unit trains of raw timber, still there is sometimes few loads to be added to this trains, mostly from what are deliverd by IBAB from north these are easy to spot as IBAB uses standard low sided condolas painted in Green Gargo red to this service. Green Gargo uses custom built cars for this service, and IBAB operates these cars to but they seem to be used for online customers.

During the winter of 2005, these trains become more interesting, as the north bound counterpart is coupledtogether with a empty timber unit train and the consist is double headed by a pair of freight Rc.s of Rc2.s or Rc4.s. Green Gargo uses Rc1.s also in timber service but on the line to Mora, they are very uncommon, so far I have seen them twice so far.

The routine in Mora goes like this once the train arrives, the power of the train are split and one of the engines are coupled to its "Lunch Break Special". Usually by then it is time for a mid day regional set with a Regina set to arrive to the station. During this stop every other action comes to halt, perhaps of safty reasons and as the trainset goes to Mora Strand flagstop some 400 meters further west. The switching continues. The loaded train of timber has been waiting in the west end with its power a locally assigned T44 which will return back with empty timber cars on the unelectrified last 3 kilometrs to the terminal. The second RC is coupled to the train set and everything stalls once again as the earlier regina is making a stop, now bound for Borlänge. Some ten minutes later it is time for "Lunch Break Special" to leave, followed an hour later by the timber train.

These imges are taken on 25th of February 2005, and todays power are a pair of Rc4.s a blue bandit Rc4 1185 and Rc4 1285 in green. The Green unit is bound to return with the timber train while the blue bandit is bound home with the hot general freight, alias "Lunch Break Special", seen while pickin up speed at former, now mostly abandoned yard of Mora Noret.

Webdesign & Photos:Ollie Ahokas, e-mail: Olliehokas@.yahoo.se.