Palestine Railways P class

P class 4-6-0 no. 60 on the turntable at Haifa in 1950

Type and origin
Power type	steam
Builder	North British Locomotive Company
Serial number	24219 – 24224^[1]
Build date	1935^[2]
Total produced	6

Specifications
Configuration:
• Whyte	4-6-0^[1]^[2]
Gauge	1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge
Bogies	6 ft 8 in (2,032 mm) wheelbase^[3]
Leading dia.	2 ft 9 in (838 mm)^[3]
Driver dia.	5 ft 6+3⁄4 in (1,695 mm) ^[1]^[2]
Wheelbase	25 ft 11 in (7.90 m)^[3]
Length	loco & tender 65 ft 6 in (19.96 m) over buffers^[3]
Height	14 ft 2 in (4.32 m)^[3]
Axle load	26 long tons (29.1 short tons; 26.4 t)^[3]
Adhesive weight	17 long tons (19.0 short tons; 17.3 t); 17 long tons (19.0 short tons; 17.3 t); 16.95 long tons (19.0 short tons; 17.2 t)^[3]
Loco weight	68.65 long tons (76.9 short tons; 69.8 t)^[3]
Total weight	127.5 long tons (142.8 short tons; 129.5 t) laden^[3]
Fuel type	originally Welsh coal; converted to oil by 1943^[4]
Fuel capacity	1,193 imperial gallons (1,433 US gal; 5,420 L)^[1] (after conversion to oil fuel)
Water cap.	6,500 imperial gallons (7,800 US gal; 30,000 L)^[1]^[2]
Firebox:
• Grate area	29 square feet (2.7 m²)^[2]
Boiler pressure	190 lbf/in² (1.31 MPa)^[1]
Heating surface	1,949 sq ft (181.1 m²)^[1]^[2]
Cylinders	2, outside^[2]
Cylinder size	20+1⁄2 in × 28 in (521 mm × 711 mm)^[1]^[2]

Performance figures
Tractive effort	28,470 lbf (126.6 kN)^[1]^[2]

Career
Operators	Palestine Military Railway 1919–20; Palestine Railways 1920–48; Israel Railways 1948–60
Class	P^[2]
Number in class	6
Numbers	60 – 65^[1]^[2]
Locale	Mandate Palestine; northern Sinai; latterly Israel
Delivered	1935
First run	1935
Last run	1960
Retired	1960
Scrapped	1960
Disposition	All scrapped (tender of No. 62 preserved)

The Palestine Railways P class was a type of standard gauge mixed traffic steam locomotive on Palestine Railways and its successor Israel Railways. The PMR introduced the class in 1935 and Israel Railways withdrew the last ones in 1960.

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Transcription

Dan Pagis was born into a Jewish family in Bukovina, Rumania in 1930, and died in Jerusalem in 1986. He was first confronted with the Holocaust as a boy of eleven, on a German transport train, with his grandparents. Pagis survived the Holocaust and arrived in Palestine as a sixteen-year-old. He married, had children and besides being a popular teacher of Literature at the Hebrew University, he also became one of Israel's leading poets. Here in this carload I am eve, with Abel my son. If you see my other son Cain son of man tell him that I For me it's one of the ultimate poems on the Holocaust. This poem has to be taught together with the four verses in the book of genesis, because he invokes the name Cain and Abel and Eve and Adam in the poem itself. So what Pagis is doing is making a direct connection between that first universal family, the first murderer on earth - there are only four people on earth and one brother murders the other, Cain murders Abel - and it's an uninterrupted history of murder for Dan Pagis, because history for Dan Pagis is cyclical, and if you look carefully at the poem, the poem is not concluded. So you can read the poem from the end of the poem, it's cyclical, from the end of the poem to the beginning of the poem ad infinitum, and I think that one of the themes to be extracted from this particular fact is that for Dan Pagis history is cyclical in terms of murder, from that single murder to mass murder. Other things that emanate from the dialog between the verses and the poem: Woman in the two tragedies: the tragedy of the murder of her one son, her youngest son, and the place of woman in the tragedy of the Holocaust. You could touch on the theme of Holocaust denial because Cain, in the story in the Bible, in one of the verses, denies - he doesn't know where his brother is, "Am I my brother's keeper?" So you have here a denial that is a prototype of Holocaust denial three thousand years down the line. The subject of the mark of Cain, that is something that could be discussed as a theme. The need to leave testimony: If you look at the poem, the last line of the poem is "tell him that i", and Dan Pagis doesn't put any words into Eve's mouth. He's unable to actually formulate the testimony that she wants to leave. So one of the things that we suggest you can do with the students in your class, is to have them write out this testimony that Dan Pagis didn't formulate. And then you have of course wonderful material for class discussion afterwards.

Background

Palestine Railways was founded in 1920 to operate all railways in the League of Nations Mandate of Palestine. The mainstays of its locomotive fleet were its 50 H class 4-6-0s built by Baldwin in Pennsylvania in 1918, covering most duties on the main line between Haifa in Palestine and El Kantara East on the Suez Canal in Egypt via Lydda, Gaza and El Arish. Its daily Haifa – El Kantara through service was hardly an express, but it included two Wagons-Lits cars^[5] and early in the 1930s PR sought a more powerful locomotive to improve its performance.

Characteristics

In 1935 PR bought six new 4-6-0 tender locomotives from the North British Locomotive Company in Glasgow, Scotland and designated them class P. These had a tractive effort of 28,470 lbf (126.6 kN): 16% more power than the 24,479 lbf (108.9 kN) of class H.^[1] Class P also had 5 ft 6+3⁄4 in (1,695 mm) driving wheels:^[1] a mixed-traffic diameter by British standards but 4+3⁄4 inches (120 mm) larger than those of the H class and therefore more suitable for higher speed traffic.

The locomotives were typically British in design but the tenders were not. Most tender locomotives in Britain had six-wheel tenders but PR opted for more American-style bogie tenders, reportedly to carry more water.^[6] However, PR's track was not the highest quality so the fact that bogie vehicles ride better and may be less prone to derailment may have been another factor.

In service all members of the class were painted black.^[2] From 1944 the number of each locomotive was painted in very large numerals on the side of its tender.^[2]

World War II and after

PR had fuelled its locomotives with Welsh coal^[4] but in June 1940 Italy declared war on the Allies, making the Mediterranean extremely dangerous for British merchant shipping. PR therefore began converting its locomotives to burn oil, but it did not complete the conversion programme until 1943.^[4]

Palestine Railways was strategically important to the British Mandate authorities, so paramilitaries frequently attacked it during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine and especially the 1946–48 1947–1949 Palestine war. El Kantara – Haifa trains were a particular target and Zionist paramilitaries bombed them three times during the 1947–1949 Palestine war. The P class survived these attacks and PR's Quishon workshops in Haifa managed to repair any damage.^{[citation needed]}

After the UK withdrew from Mandate Palestine in May 1948, all six P class passed into Israel Railways stock. After the War of Independence and subsequent 1948 Arab–Israeli War, mainline services were truncated to the territory within the new State of Israel. By 1956 diesels had taken over the main line services and steam workings were largely confined to the central part of the country around Lod (formerly Lydda).^[7] The P class remained in service until the official end of steam on Israel Railways in 1959. All six were scrapped in about 1960 but the tender of number 62 is preserved at the Israel Railway Museum in Haifa.^{[citation needed]}

References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l Cotterell, 1984, page 130
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m Proud & Smith, 1946, page 7
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ Cotterell, 1984, page 27
^ ^a ^b ^c Hughes 1981, p. 41.
^ Cotterell 1984, p. 32.
^ Cotterell 1984, p. 53.
^ Cotterell 1984, p. 99.

Sources

Cotterell, Paul (1984). The Railways of Palestine and Israel. Abingdon: Tourret Publishing. ISBN 0-905878-04-3.
Hughes, Hugh (1981). Middle East Railways. Harrow: Continental Railway Circle. ISBN 0-9503469-7-7.
Proud, Peter; Smith, C, eds. (1946). The Standard Gauge Locomotives of the Egyptian State Railways and The Palestine Railways 1942–1945. London: Railway Correspondence & Travel Society. p. 7.

This page was last edited on 25 March 2024, at 13:36