The legend of the Soviet railways - freight locomotive VL8

Those who are nostalgic for Soviet times are usually subject to their own stereotypes. If ice cream, then ice cream, a car - a Zhiguli, a motorcycle - JAWA. And ahead of the endless freight trains, of course, is the legendary VL8. It is hard to imagine, but its design was started 70 years ago. A year later, a prototype appeared under the marking H8 (Novocherkassk, 8-axle). After another 3 years, mass production began. It continued throughout the reign of Khrushchev, capturing the first years of the Brezhnev era. By the beginning of the so-called. stagnant period, the locomotive was discontinued. However, this did not prevent him from becoming the personification of that time.


This fact was facilitated by the fact that 12 locomotives were assembled at two electric locomotive plants over 1723 years of production. In addition to Novocherkassk, a couple of years later, the Tbilisi plant (TEVZ) began to produce them. As a result, almost three times more Georgian electric locomotives were assembled. At the beginning of the 60s, VL8 (stands for "Vladimir Lenin, 8-axle") was considered the most powerful freight locomotive in the USSR. He was able to overcome the 9% rise with 3500 tons behind him, while maintaining a speed of more than 50 km / h. Surprisingly, so far, several modernized VL8s continue to work on the Crimean roads. They are assigned to the Simferopol station. You will learn how this technique looks like in practice from the video from the Pokemosha life channel.