1.
Ladysmith, KwaZulu-Natal
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Ladysmith is a town in the Uthukela District of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It is 230 kilometres north-west of Durban and 365 kilometres south of Johannesburg, important industries in the area include food processing, textile and tyre production. Tyres are produced by Sumitomo Rubber South Africa in the town of Steadville. Ladysmith is the seat for both the Alfred Duma Local Municipality and the Uthukela District Municipality, in 1847 after buying land from the Zulu king Mpande, a number of Boers settled in the area and called it the Republic of Klip River with Andries Spies as their commandant. The republic was annexed by the British in the same year, on 11 October 1850 the name was changed to Ladysmith after Juana María de los Dolores de León Smith also known as Lady Smith, the Spanish wife of Sir Harry Smith, the Governor of the Cape Colony. Sir Harry Smith was the British general governor of Cape Colony, a fort was built in 1860 to protect the villagers from the Zulu. During the Second Boer War British commander Lieutenant General Sir George White made Ladysmith his centre of operations for the protection of Natal against the Boer forces. Following the Battle of Ladysmith, whilst British forces under Lieutenant General Sir George White regrouped in the town, the siege lasted 118 days, from 2 November 1899 to 28 February 1900, during the most crucial stage of the war. Approximately 3,000 British soldiers died during the siege, three attempts by General Sir Redvers Buller to break the siege resulted in defeat for the British forces at the battles of Colenso, Spion Kop and Vaal Krantz. On 6 January 1900 the Boer forces of Commandant-General Piet Joubert attempted to end the siege by taking the town before the British could launch another attempt to break the siege and this led to the battle of Platrand south of the town. Buller finally broke the siege on 28 February 1900 after defeating the Boers by using close cooperation between his infantry and artillery. Sir Winston Churchill, then a war correspondent for The Morning Post, was present at the Relief of Ladysmith after having been taken prisoner. Mohandas Gandhi and the corps that he established earlier during the war was involved in a number of actions that took place in. Ladysmith is located on the banks of the Klip River, with the business district. It is on the foothills of the Drakensberg mountains, about 26 km from the Van Reenen pass, since it was established the town has suffered severely from flooding of the Klip River. During the 110 years up to 1997 with the completion of the Qedusizi Dam,29 serious floods have occurred, minor flooding occurred almost every year. The worst flooding in 30 years occurred in 1996 leading to R500 million in damages, efforts to control the flooding date back to the 1940s. In 1949 the Windsor Dam was completed, but this dam silted up very fast and was not a means of flood control
2.
Electro-Motive Diesel
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Electro-Motive Diesel is an American manufacturer of diesel-electric locomotives, locomotive products and diesel engines for the rail industry. The company is owned by Caterpillar through its subsidiary Progress Rail Services Corporation, in 1930, General Motors purchased Electro-Motive Company and the Winton Engine Co. combining the two to form its Electro-Motive Division in 1941. In 2005, GM sold EMD to Greenbriar Equity Group and Berkshire Partners, in 2010, Progress Rail Services completed the purchase of Electro-Motive Diesel from Greenbriar, Berkshire, and others. EMDs headquarters, engineering facilities and parts manufacturing operations are based in McCook, Illinois, while its final assembly line is located in Muncie. EMD also operates a traction motor maintenance, rebuild and overhaul facility in San Luis Potosí, as of 2008, EMD employed approximately 3,260 people, and in 2010 it held approximately 30 percent of the market for diesel-electric locomotives in North America. Harold L. Hamilton and Paul Turner founded the Electro-Motive Engineering Corporation in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1922, the company developed and marketed self-propelled railcars using General Electrics newly developed internal combustion-electric propulsion and control systems. Hamilton started his career as a fireman, then locomotive engineer, on the Southern Pacific Railroad. Financing himself, he quit his sales position and set up shop in a hotel with his partner. In 1923 EMC sold two gasoline-powered rail motor cars, one to the Chicago Great Western and the other to the Northern Pacific, EMC subcontracted the body construction to St. Louis Car Company, electrical components to General Electric, and the prime mover to Winton Engine Company. The motorcars were delivered in 1924 and worked well, fortunate for the fledgling company, in 1925, EMC entered full-scale production, selling 27 railcars. In 1930 General Motors was seeking to improve their Diesel technology and they purchased the Winton Engine Company who, in addition to their Diesel products, sold non-Diesel engines for EMC-developed rail motorcars. The combined resources of GM and their new Winton subsidiary were focused on developing Diesel engines with improved power-to-weight ratios, GM saw EMCs role in marketing and applications development as fitting their objectives and purchased the company shortly after the Winton acquisition, renaming it Electro-Motive Corporation. In 1933 EMC designed the power setups for the Zephyr and M-10000 streamliners, the Zephyr used the first major product of the new GM-Winton venture, the 600 hp Winton 201A 2-stroke Diesel engine. Encouraged by the success of the new streamliners, EMC invested in a new locomotive factory. The new headquarters on 55th Street in McCook, Illinois, west of Chicago, in 1938 EMC started production of locomotives using GMs new 567 engine, which upgraded the horsepower to 2000 per locomotive unit and increased reliability. The 567, named for its displacement-per-cylinder of 567.45 in³, was a two-cycle Roots-blown, Uniflow-scavenged, Unit-injected engine with overhead camshafts and it was built as a V-6, V-8, V-12 and V-16. Charles F. Kettering and the General Motors Research Corporation were in charge of its development and their nearest competitor was the American Locomotive Company, who started production of less-developed Diesel locomotives to compete with the E-units in 1939. Baldwins response to the challenge of the E-units was to develop a steam locomotive design that pushed beyond the limits of practicality, passenger trains made little money for the railroads, but replacement of steam engines with reliable Diesel units could provide railroads with a crucial difference for profitability
3.
General Motors South Africa
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General Motors South Africa, or GMSA, is a wholly owned subsidiary of American automobile manufacturer General Motors. It manufacturers and distributes automobiles under the Chevrolet, Opel and Isuzu brands, the company is headquartered in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Founded in 1913, GMSA initially distributed Chevrolet vehicles before beginning to manufacture and distribute vehicles of all of GMs brands in 1926, by the 1960s this included the British Vauxhall marque. Delta continued to use the Opel, Isuzu and Suzuki brands under licence from GM as well as pay for the supply of assembly kits. It also assembles vehicles for export to other right hand drive markets in the region, such as Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi, Kenya and Mauritius. Although GM divested the last of its ownership of Isuzu, it owns the dealership network in South Africa. Began constructing GM-designed locomotives rather than importing them from the United States, in January 1987, GMSA was sold to local management which continued production as the Delta Motor Corporation. The company failed after one order of 11E-Type locomotives were constructed using GMSA leftovers, Delta Motor Corporation focused instead on automobile engines rather than locomotives, shutting down the plant where the locomotives were constructed
4.
Astarsa
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Astilleros Argentinos Río de La Plata S. A. was an Argentine shipyard. Its core business was built and repair of ships and locomotives and it also manufactured pipes, industrial machinery, and tractors. It went out of business in 1994, in the 1920s the Sociedad Colectiva Hansen y Pucchini, predecessor of Astarsa, was founded. The first ship over 1000 tons launched in Argentina was built by Astarsa for Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales, the shipyard was located in the city of Tigre, north of Greater Buenos Aires, on the Luján River. It had a peak of 1,500 naval and metallurgic workers, between 1976 and 1991 Astarsa manufactured 267 locomotives under GM license for the Argentine market, also exporting models to South Africa and Saudi Arabia. In the early 1970s, Astarsa produced agricultural machinery under licence from the American company Caterpillar, during the 1970s, Astarsa workers spoke out against frequent accidents in the factory which had caused several deaths, and ended up going on strike in 1973. The decreasing activity of the Argentine merchant navy since the 1980s, in 1994 the company ceased operations, abandoning locomotives within its shop. By 1997, the company declared bankruptcy and the factory was in the process of being sold by 2000, 19-23 Los trabajadores navales de Tigre. La militancia sindical en un contexto de enfrentamiento militar, lucha Armada en la Argentina n°2, pag
5.
Argentina
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Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a federal republic in the southern half of South America. With a mainland area of 2,780,400 km2, Argentina is the eighth-largest country in the world, the second largest in Latin America, and the largest Spanish-speaking one. The country is subdivided into provinces and one autonomous city, Buenos Aires. The provinces and the capital have their own constitutions, but exist under a federal system, Argentina claims sovereignty over part of Antarctica, the Falkland Islands, and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. The earliest recorded presence in the area of modern-day Argentina dates back to the Paleolithic period. The country has its roots in Spanish colonization of the region during the 16th century, Argentina rose as the successor state of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, a Spanish overseas viceroyalty founded in 1776. The country thereafter enjoyed relative peace and stability, with waves of European immigration radically reshaping its cultural. The almost-unparalleled increase in prosperity led to Argentina becoming the seventh wealthiest developed nation in the world by the early 20th century, Argentina retains its historic status as a middle power in international affairs, and is a prominent regional power in the Southern Cone and Latin America. Argentina has the second largest economy in South America, the third-largest in Latin America and is a member of the G-15 and it is the country with the second highest Human Development Index in Latin America with a rating of very high. Because of its stability, market size and growing high-tech sector, the description of the country by the word Argentina has to be found on a Venice map in 1536. In English the name Argentina probably comes from the Spanish language, however the naming itself is not Spanish, Argentina means in Italian of silver, silver coloured, probably borrowed from the Old French adjective argentine of silver > silver coloured already mentioned in the 12th century. The French word argentine is the form of argentin and derives of argent silver with the suffix -in. The Italian naming Argentina for the country implies Argentina Terra land of silver or Argentina costa coast of silver, in Italian, the adjective or the proper noun is often used in an autonomous way as a substantive and replaces it and it is said lArgentina. The name Argentina was probably first given by the Venitian and Genoese navigators, in Spanish and Portuguese, the words for silver are respectively plata and prata and of silver is said plateado and prateado. Argentina was first associated with the silver mountains legend, widespread among the first European explorers of the La Plata Basin. The first written use of the name in Spanish can be traced to La Argentina, a 1602 poem by Martín del Barco Centenera describing the region, the 1826 constitution included the first use of the name Argentine Republic in legal documents. The name Argentine Confederation was also used and was formalized in the Argentine Constitution of 1853. In 1860 a presidential decree settled the name as Argentine Republic
6.
Bo'Bo'
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B-B and Bo-Bo are the AAR and UIC classifications of wheel arrangement for railway locomotives with four axles in two individual bogies. It is a wheel arrangement for modern electric and diesel locomotives. Bo-Bo is the UIC indication of an arrangement for railway vehicles with four axles in two individual bogies, all driven by their own traction motors. It is a wheel arrangement for modern electric and diesel-electric locomotives. Most early electric locomotives shared commonalities with the engines of their time. These features included side rods and frame mounted driving axles with leading and trailing axles, the long rigid wheelbase and the leading and trailing axles reduced cornering stability and increased weight. The Bo-Bo configuration allowed for higher cornering speeds due to the rigid wheelbase. Furthermore, it allowed better adhesion because all the wheels were now powered, due to the absence of frame mounted wheels no leading or trailing axles were necessary to aid cornering, reducing weight and maintenance requirements. Due to the advent of modern motors and electronics more power can be brought to the rail with only a few axles, modern electric locomotives can deliver up to 6400 kW on only four axles. The B′B′ or B-B arrangement is similar, but applies to diesel-hydraulic locomotives rather than diesel-electrics, the axles on each bogie are coupled together mechanically, rather than being driven by individual traction motors. Diesel-hydraulics have their engine mounted on the frame of the locomotive. Power is then transmitted to the bogies by cardan shafts and a short driveshaft between axles, a common example of this is the German V200 design and its many international derivatives. The need to arrange the bogie suspension around the shafts led to an unusual bogie design with radius arms rather than hornblocks and so prominently visible wheels. In some rare examples, such as the narrow-gauge ÖBB2095, having only a single final-drive per bogie allows more room for the bogie pivots on this narrow-gauge design. With high power locomotives, splitting the drive directly to two axles is preferred, as it only requires a less powerful final drive gearbox. In AAR notation a Bo-Bo is regarded as a B-B because the AAR system does not take traction motors into consideration, an AAR-like notation is used in France too, making it hard to tell the B-B and Bo-Bo engines apart, both of which are common there. Railcars and multiple units use similar two-axle powered bogies and many of them use similar hydraulic or mechanical transmissions, however railcars are also lightweight and do not require all axles to be powered in order to gain adequate adhesion. They thus use an arrangement of 1A-A1 rather than B-B
7.
Bo-Bo
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B-B and Bo-Bo are the AAR and UIC classifications of wheel arrangement for railway locomotives with four axles in two individual bogies. It is a wheel arrangement for modern electric and diesel locomotives. Bo-Bo is the UIC indication of an arrangement for railway vehicles with four axles in two individual bogies, all driven by their own traction motors. It is a wheel arrangement for modern electric and diesel-electric locomotives. Most early electric locomotives shared commonalities with the engines of their time. These features included side rods and frame mounted driving axles with leading and trailing axles, the long rigid wheelbase and the leading and trailing axles reduced cornering stability and increased weight. The Bo-Bo configuration allowed for higher cornering speeds due to the rigid wheelbase. Furthermore, it allowed better adhesion because all the wheels were now powered, due to the absence of frame mounted wheels no leading or trailing axles were necessary to aid cornering, reducing weight and maintenance requirements. Due to the advent of modern motors and electronics more power can be brought to the rail with only a few axles, modern electric locomotives can deliver up to 6400 kW on only four axles. The B′B′ or B-B arrangement is similar, but applies to diesel-hydraulic locomotives rather than diesel-electrics, the axles on each bogie are coupled together mechanically, rather than being driven by individual traction motors. Diesel-hydraulics have their engine mounted on the frame of the locomotive. Power is then transmitted to the bogies by cardan shafts and a short driveshaft between axles, a common example of this is the German V200 design and its many international derivatives. The need to arrange the bogie suspension around the shafts led to an unusual bogie design with radius arms rather than hornblocks and so prominently visible wheels. In some rare examples, such as the narrow-gauge ÖBB2095, having only a single final-drive per bogie allows more room for the bogie pivots on this narrow-gauge design. With high power locomotives, splitting the drive directly to two axles is preferred, as it only requires a less powerful final drive gearbox. In AAR notation a Bo-Bo is regarded as a B-B because the AAR system does not take traction motors into consideration, an AAR-like notation is used in France too, making it hard to tell the B-B and Bo-Bo engines apart, both of which are common there. Railcars and multiple units use similar two-axle powered bogies and many of them use similar hydraulic or mechanical transmissions, however railcars are also lightweight and do not require all axles to be powered in order to gain adequate adhesion. They thus use an arrangement of 1A-A1 rather than B-B
8.
Track gauge
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In rail transport, track gauge is the spacing of the rails on a railway track and is measured between the inner faces of the load-bearing rails. All vehicles on a network must have running gear that is compatible with the track gauge, as the dominant parameter determining interoperability, it is still frequently used as a descriptor of a route or network. There is a distinction between the gauge and actual gauge at some locality, due to divergence of track components from the nominal. Railway engineers use a device, like a caliper, to measure the actual gauge, the nominal track gauge is the distance between the inner faces of the rails. In current practice, it is specified at a distance below the rail head as the inner faces of the rail head are not necessarily vertical. In some cases in the earliest days of railways, the company saw itself as an infrastructure provider only. Colloquially the wagons might be referred to as four-foot gauge wagons, say and this nominal value does not equate to the flange spacing, as some freedom is allowed for. An infrastructure manager might specify new or replacement track components at a variation from the nominal gauge for pragmatic reasons. Track is defined in old Imperial units or in universally accepted metric units or SI units, Imperial units were established in United Kingdom by The Weights and Measures Act of 1824. In addition, there are constraints, such as the load-carrying capacity of axles. Narrow gauge railways usually cost less to build because they are lighter in construction, using smaller cars and locomotives, as well as smaller bridges, smaller tunnels. Narrow gauge is often used in mountainous terrain, where the savings in civil engineering work can be substantial. Broader gauge railways are generally expensive to build and require wider curves. There is no single perfect gauge, because different environments and economic considerations come into play, a narrow gauge is superior if ones main considerations are economy and tight curvature. For direct, unimpeded routes with high traffic, a broad gauge may be preferable, the Standard, Russian, and 46 gauges are designed to strike a reasonable balance between these factors. In addition to the general trade-off, another important factor is standardization, once a standard has been chosen, and equipment, infrastructure, and training calibrated to that standard, conversion becomes difficult and expensive. This also makes it easier to adopt an existing standard than to invent a new one and this is true of many technologies, including railroad gauges. The reduced cost, greater efficiency, and greater economic opportunity offered by the use of a common standard explains why a number of gauges predominate worldwide
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