Product Features and Details
Model: of the French museum railroad Museé des Tramways à Vapeur steam locomotive, road number 75. It has prototypical paint and lettering for Era VI as the locomotive still looks today in service. All of the wheel sets are driven by a powerful Bühler motor with ball bearings. The locomotive has traction tires. It also has an mtc interface connector for installation of the 55028 decoder. The headlights in the front and the factory-installed smoke unit can be turned on and off by means of mode of operation switch. Length over the buffers 31 cm / 12-1/4".
At the end of the 19th / beginning of the 20th century, a number of narrow gauge rail networks sprang up in France too. One of them formed the "Tramways d´Ille-et-Vilaine" (TIV), whose lines radiated out from the operational mid-point of Rennes. Between 1897 and 1924, a meter gauge network with a route length of 510 km / 319 miles developed. Notable were the quite long lines Rennes – La Mézière – Saint-Malo (79 km / 49 miles) or Rennes – Grand-Fougeray (64 km / 40 miles). A number of small steam locomotives were available for operation on the TIV lines: 12 Tramway steam locomotives (road numbers 1-12, Ct, 1897/98 Blanc-Misseron), 41 three-axle units (road numbers 51-69, Ct, 1901/02 and road numbers 70-91, Ct, 1908-14, both series from Corpet-Louvet) four 0-4-4-0T Mallet tank locomotives (road numbers 101-104, 1897, Corpet-Louvet), and two four-axle units (road numbers 201-202, 1931, Corpet-Louvet). The first line abandonments began as early as 1937, and the history of the TIV ended with the stopping of operation between Rennes and Saint Malo in 1950. The small three-axle unit with the road number 75 remained preserved as the only TIV steam locomotive. Yet, before the abandonment of the last line, it was sold along with its sibling locomotive road number 73 to the firm of Lambert in Vaujours en Seine et Marne, where both units were hauling freight cars filled with gypsum. After they were taken out of service in 1959, both units were in danger of being scrapped in 1962, but road number 75 emerged unscathed. Due to its better condition it was set up as a memorial in the museum at Saint-Mande and was even equipped with the smoke stack from road number 73 since its own smoke stack had been broken. After the museum was closed in the Eighties, this unit was acquired in 1987 by the "Fédération des amis des chemins de fer secondaires" (FACS) and ran for the first time in November of 1989 at the "Musée des tramways à vapeur et des chemins de fer secondaires français" (MTVS). This museum is located at the train station of Valmondois in Butry-sur-Oise, 30 km / 19 miles north of Paris. Starting in 1996 this locomotive was due for a main overhaul, which turned out to be rather extensive due to the accumulations of gypsum. It was not until October 1, 2011 as part of the "Festivals of Steam" that the last remainder of the TIV could be presented under steam again on a kilometer / 0.63 mile long museum line.
