Photos taken during the Basingstoke and District Railway Society's overseas trip, 1998
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Barreiro Diesel Locomotive Works is situated on the down side of the railway line which runs south from Barreiro Ferry Terminal, across the road from the main station. Indeed, the works building is on the site of the original terminus station. The current station and all its associated facilities appear to have been built on reclaimed land. (I'm guessing here - please correct me if you know better.) |
| The front entrance to the works is up some steps, and this is the sign on the door.
Not being an expert in Portuguese (I don't think I even know enough to qualify as a
novice, come to that) I can't promise a faithful translation, but it's something like: EMEF Railway Equipment Maintenance Company, Ltd. BARREIRO GROUP WORKSHOP |
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The pictures appearing below are presented in more or less the order we went round the
workshop, not in the order of the processes being undertaken. The first things we saw were stripped-down diesel generators. Here, the cylinder liners have been removed and stand alongside the main block. (NB As well as not being a Portuguese linguist, I'm no mechanical engineer either, so the captions below may be a bit less technical than some of you would like. Please, don't ask me any technical questions about them, but if you can provide illuminating comments, I'll be pleased to receive them.) |
| There were some impressively-sized crankshafts standing on work benches. |  |
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This picture allows an interesting comparison to be made. In the foreground is a stripped-down cylinder block from an English Electric engine. In the background is a similar engine, fully-assembled. |
| At the end of the works away from the street entrance, tracks run into the works through up-and-over doors. A number of locomotives of various different classes were standing inside the works, some being stripped-down, and others being reassembled. |  |
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With the exception of a small traverser trolley about half-way down the workshop, there are no rails beyond the location of the locomotives in the previous picture. Heavy objects are moved by overhead traversing cranes. The makers plate on one of the cranes certainly wasn't in Portuguese! |
| The chap in the grey overall in the foreground was our guide for the tour of the works, and looked after us very kindly. Other members of our party are behind him, next to the shell of CP locomotive 1413. |  |
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Collision damage to locomotive 1807 was being repaired while we were there - a
replacement plate was being welded into position. One of our party - the gent in the green
cap - was particularly interested in this, being a welder himself. (NB: the bright vertical line in this picture is an artefact - the picture was taken with a digital camera, and many of these are prone to this type of flare in high contrast situations - and of course, contrast doesn't get much higher than this picture!) |
| You'd naturally expect to see a lot of wheels during a tour of a locomotive works... |  |
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...and a close look at these allows you to see the roller bearings, which are normally behind a protective plate, and therefore rarely seen. |
| A steam bath is used to remove grease and grime from certain components before they are worked on. I was fortunate to catch the moment the door was opened. |  |
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As well as manually-operated lathes, there are computer-controlled models in the workshop, and we watched for a while as adjustments were made on the control panel of one of them. |
| This is good advice wherever you are: Think before saying "it's not my responsibility." Very suitable for a workshop, though - especially this one on the coast! |  |
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One part of the workshops is responsible for maintaining the electrical equipment from the locomotives - from the electrical cabinets themselves - illustrated here - down to the smallest components. |
| In the final corner of the works, an operator was using an acetylene torch to cut out components from sheet metal. |  |
Everyone in our party thoroughly enjoyed the visit to Barreiro works, and our gratitude goes to those who made the arrangements for the visit, as well as to our guide and the other EMEF staff who spent time showing us what they were doing. It was certainly made more interesting by the fact that we visited the works during a working day, as opposed to an open day, so that we could observe real work instead of staged demonstrations.
For pictures of Lisboa's trams, click here.
Find out more about the Basingstoke & District Railway Society.
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This page is a part of Chris Tolley's web-site. Latest update: Sunday, June 25, 2000 22:25 |
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