THE 141-RS THAT BECAME ‘STARS

The 141-Rs weren't made to be stars or beauty queens. Simple, robust, enduring and rather awkwardly shaped, these locomotives have small ‘Boxpok’ drive wheels and very small solid front wheels. Their boiler is potbelly-shaped and the cabin has a vast, heavily curved roof.

They were not Chapelon or PLM ‘Pacifics’, and certainly not 241-Ps or the beautiful and unique 232-U-1. But some of them did achieve a degree of fame, undoubtedly because they were the last survivors of the glorious steam locomotive era.

During the 1980s and right up to the present day, they were practically the only ones left to make special journeys and provide smoky panache or roar in a world where the railways had become silent due to electrification. Here are a few examples, listed in order of how old they were when they were built, with two ‘charbonnières’ to start with, the following ones being oil-fired.

Built at ALCO in Schenectady (USA) and brought to France in 1946, she started her career at the Mézidon depot. She then had an eventful career at the depots in Creil, Boulogne-sur-Mer, Beauvais and Sarreguemines, where she retired. But she was fortunate enough to be acquired by the ‘Société Civile de Conservation de la 141-R-420’ in 1976, two years after she ran her last train in 1974 between Béning and Sarreguemines, in the SNCF's Eastern region, by which time she had covered over a million kilometres.

Built by Baldwin in Chester (USA), her career began at the Longueau depot in the SNCF's Nord region in 1946. She was to remain on the Nord network, assigned to the depots at Lille- Délivrance, Boulogne-sur-Mer and then Beauvais. It was then brought to Sarreguemines in 1972, to be scrapped. But then a miracle happened: The ‘Association des Modélistes Ferroviaires de Grenoble’ (AMFG) acquired it and gave it to the famous CFTA workshops in Gray, where it was refurbished, having surpassed one million kilometres in service.

We are now in the world of ‘petrol’ (fuel). The 1126 is one of the 141-Rs to have clocked up over two million kilometres, all of them travelled under the Mediterranean sun. Like the 420, it was built in Schenectady (USA), and began its career in Nîmes, then Nice, Avignon and Narbonne in the 1960s, before being ‘written off’ in 1975. It wasn't until 1989 that a group of enthusiasts managed to save it and placed it in storage at the Toulouse depot.

With 2,464,677 kms covered during a long and intense life, this is the ‘’record holder‘’ of the series. Built by ALCO in Schenectady (USA), she began her French life in Nice, before moving on to Narbonne, Vierzon and Bordeaux. This locomotive had the honour of towing the famous ‘Mistral’ train.

The locomotive is very familiar to readers of this publication in its reduced form. Built by Baldwin in Chester (USA), the real 141-R is the last locomotive to have operated in France, after extensive service in the West region (Le Mans, Auray, St-Brieuc, Nantes) and then the South-East (Lyon) in 1975. It was selected to represent this brilliant ‘R’ series at the ‘Cité du Train-Patrimoine SNCF’ in Mulhouse.

Bought and saved by a Swiss enthusiast who is running it in Switzerland through an association, this locomotive was built in Montreal (Canada) and put into service at the Nice depot. It was assigned to Nîmes in the 1950s, then to Annemasse, Saint-Brieuc, Auray, Le Mans and Lyon between 1960 and 1975. It covered more than 1.4 million kilometres.

The ‘Pacific’ was the ideal speed locomotive for the first half of the 20th century, but the increasing weight of passenger trains demanded even more power. Engineers developed type 232, known as the ‘Baltic’, but it never achieved the success, or simply the fame, of the ‘Pacific’ that it sought to replace.

The same procedure had to be followed when the locomotive changed from type 200 to type 221 at the beginning of the 20th century: the locomotive had to be lengthened at the rear and fitted with a more powerful, and therefore larger, firebox. This led to the switch from type 231 to type 232, or from the ‘Pacific’ to the ‘Baltic’ on the Nord network in France. They differed in terms of their boilers: the 3-1101 had a conventional boiler with fire tubes leading the gases into the water, while the 3-1102 had an experimental boiler with water tubes. These two locomotives were built in 1911, but the First World War prevented the project from being pursued. They were to be known as ‘the two orphans’... and yet they were magnificent, with their long, slender lines and identical front and rear bogies that were taken over by the tender, giving this locomotive its unique style.