Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: MOW

Here's a second shot, Picture 3 in my own collection, showing one of the ballast hoppers behind the Class 741's.

I've never gotten a photo of a CD Class 741 diesel before, as they're a bit rare. These two are actually operated by Viamont, which is a construction contractor and TOC, and as such are pulling a ballast train. Their TOC operations are mostly in regional services, using Class 810 railbuses, but I haven't seen any of them yet. Getting back to these locomotives, the 741 Class are relatively new by Czech standards, having only been introduced since 2000 by CZ LOKO, a rebuilder who make them out of old Class 740 hood units originally built by CKD in the 1970's and 1980's. In addition to the lowered hood, both long and short, as you can see here, these locomotives have been regeared for 90Km/h service. Power is still 883kW (1184 horsepower), however.

I'm not 100% certain, but I'm pretty sure that this is a camp car for MOW service, given the configuration of the windows, and the small baggage door. It could also be a combine or a brake van, but a combine would have a bigger door, I think. Again, more research might uncover something interesting.

This shot more than most that I've done lately illustrates the advantages of shooting film. I like the shot as it was shot, but this lineup of the two different "Pantograph" EMU classes, plus the crane, is better for the internet, so I cropped. The result? The photo is more or less as good as before, in spite of having used 35mm color print film, which other than the 110 stuff that my Fisher-Price used to take, is more or less the bottom-of-the-range when it comes to film technology.

I'm not sure if this is the same crane that I've often seen before in Cercany, but this is the closest, best shot that I've ever managed to get of one of these, which I consider to be really weird because of the short boom. The main advantages that I had this time were that I was in daylight, and in addition I had my Nikon N80, rather than being confined to my cameraphone.

This train had another small locomotive that looked even smaller than 700162-1, but it wasn't. #703713-8 is a Class 703 diesel, which weighs 24 metric tons, 2 more than a Class 700.

There seems to be at least some MOW equipment based in Modrany, in addition to the spine cars that I saw there for containers (From where I don't know. I'm assuming the intermodel facility where they're loaded and unloaded is elsewhere.). The locomotives used for the Modrany MOW trains are exceptionally tiny, this one being a Class 700 diesel that only weighs 22 metric tons.

I'm not sure of what the lead unit on this work train is, as it's purpose is far from clear, with no obvious built-in tools. Is it a track geometry car? That might explain the coach, which would make a decent mobile computer lab.

I have also seen this heavy crane at Cercany at least once. I'm assuming it's not for wreck cleanup, since the boom doesn't look long or curved enough, but judging from the other cars in this consist I'm assuming it was used for rails or prefabricated track.

In April, Cercany's upgrade project continued apace. This Praga mobile crane has been there for a few months, although I don't know what it's being used for. It's interesting to me just because of its advanced age.

Mechenice, a larger station with a yard, had a work train in the siding on our visit.

One oddity that I saw in Vsetaty was this light crane. I'm not sure what it would be able to lift on a railway, given how heavy everything tends to be, but it looks like this one was being used to handle track ties (sleepers in British English), which in my experience weigh 300lbs. or less if they're wood. In this case, though, pretty much all of the ties, but in use and disused, appeared to be concrete, meaning that they would be considerably heavier.

Original unrebuilt CKD Class 753 "bespectacled" diesels are rare nowadays, but if I'm not mistaken 753306-0 is one such unit. It no longer works for CD or ZSSK, however, but has apparently been acquired by the maintenance contractor commonly calling themselves "Doprava." I took this shot at Cercany.