Greetings train lovers! In the last entry in our blogs about the history of locomotives, we traveled to the United States and the United Kingdom to discover two iconic machines, the EMD-FP7 and the British rail class 37. They were the last ones from the first wave of diesel machines, the 3rd generation of locomotives that you will find in Train Valley. After these first years during which diesel engines were perfected and spread worldwide, they became the standard for the decades to come and actually, there are still many diesel locomotives in use all over the world as we are about to see in this blog because todays machines are still in service!

VR Class Dv12

Lets travel to the cold north to discover the first locomotive of the fourth generation, the VR Class Dv12, which as of today is still the standard diesel-hydraulic locomotive of the Finnish railway network. The Dv12 was built as a general purpose locomotive, both for passenger and freight work. With a B-B wheel configuration (two trucks with two powered axles), the interconnection of its axles (that makes for an individual axle to slip pretty much impossible) give this locomotive great traction for its weight. In spite of having a comparatively low power of only 1000 kW, the Dv12 allows for just one crew to operate two or even three units at the same time.
(Photo from Wikipedia) Thanks to its versatility the Dv12 didnt become obsolete until all the main lines of the Finnish railway network were electrified. 192 of these locomotives were built during two decades until they went out of production in 1984. However, many of them are still in use, if mostly in unelectrified and less frequented side lines. Sometimes they are called back from the bench to pull cargo trains or do shunter work (moving wagons and railroad cars around for assembling or disassembling trains in classification yards). The oldest active Dv12 is 56 years old and there are no plans to retire them for good in sight. The good ole Dv12 still has some fight in it!
And here you have the in-game counterpart of the Dv12! Look at the windows and the long front that make it look a bit like the muzzle of a (slightly worried) animal, but above all at the characteristic design of the horizontal white line. This locomotive is ready to cross any field, snow-covered or not! In the next issue of our blog, we will continue our acquaintance with fourth-generation diesel locomotives. We will visit Germany and the USA and finally discover an unknown specimen of the orange locomotive! See you soon! tv2conductor