Ghost of Yesterday

Haine-Saint-Pierre depot, La Louvière-Sud (Belgium), October 11 2014



Officially known as "mobile boiler A621/204", this, in a distant past, once was locomotive 29.164.  Built by the Canadian Locomotive Company as locomotive 2291 in 1946, she had a stellar but brief career with the Belgian Railways.  Active for a mere twenty years, she and her 299 sibling Type 29 locomotives hauled anything and everything across the Belgian railway network between 1945 and 1967.

The Type 29 had been built to replace locomotives lost during World War II.  Exactly 300 were built in three distinct tranches: the Montreal Locomotive Works built 160, according them contract numbers 74498 - 74657 (29.001 - 29.160 with the Belgian Railways); the Canadian Locomotive Works built another 60 according them contract numbers 2288 - 2347 (29.161 - 29.220 with the Belgian Railways); and the American Locomotive Company built the final 80 according them contract numbers 74706 - 74785 (29.221 - 29.300 with the Belgian Railways).  The first sixty were built in 1945, and the remainder were all built during 1946.

Alas, the Type 29 entered service just as the Railways were making their plans to modernise the fleet.  Already in 1949 - just four years after the type had been introduced - the railways accepted their first electric locomotives, and in 1954, the first diesels arrived.  Gradually, the older types of locomotives were phased out, until finally the nearly-new Type 29s also began to fall under the axe in the 1960s.  The type made history when it was used for the last passenger steam services of the Belgian Railways on December 20th 1966, and it was among the four last types of steam locomotives to be retired from service on April 20th 1967 (along with the Type 53 of 1904; the Type 64 of 1906; and the Type 81 of 1912).  By the time of their retirement, these American/Canadian built locomotives were on average barely 21 years old!

However, for some Type 29 locomotives, their service did not quite end with their retirement.  25 locomotives of the class were converted in 1966 to serve as mobile boilers, which were used to pre-heat passenger carriages using steam from the locomotive's boiler.  In order to do so, these locomotives were stripped down and had their running gear removed; also a number of valves were added so that steam could be tapped directly from the steam box on the front end of the boiler.  These 25 locomotives would last a little over a decade: the last six 'survivors' were stricken on February 15th 1981 and scrapped.



Of 300 built, just two locomotives escaped the scrapman's axe: 29.013, the locomotive which did the type's last passenger service on December 20th 1966, and which was subsequently preserved; and 29.164 - this one - which more or less still exists.  A third one - 29.279 (A621/202) - did languish at Leuven/Louvain for decades, but unfortunately was scrapped as late as 2001.