Home»All Photograph Galleries»The Only Way Is Epic 4 - Sotteville Recession Sidings

The conclusion to my French tour railway wise and the reason for the collection name including the word Epic. These sidings aren't your usual ones, they are used by SNCF and house anywhere between 400-450 locomotives and shunters! All types and liveries, some for further use, some awaiting the works across the way, some for long term store and others for stripping.

Locomotives come and go, on this occasion many of the 07/22 electric's having since left but arrivals from several classes, particularly electrics, being on the rise. Featured in this collection are just over 200 of the locomotives, with a line of 70 odd electrics missed (of which 2/3's of those feature in the 2013 collection) and I have excluded shunters as there are simply too many to photograph in just a few hours. To balance out my previous visit this plays more focus to the diesels, seeing as many electrics have left or since become wedged in. Or as with about 30-odd, are still left for another time.

This time around the lack of 07/22 on site made way for the opportunity to get at the type 72's and 67's en masse and some more unusual ones have since arrived. I managed to photograph pretty much all the rarities I could find in there, there are several, no doubt there will be more come the next year or so. So to the types, we see 07, 08, 09, 15, 16, 17, 22, 25, 26, 51, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69 and class 72. With the electrics some that feature are not so easy t identify class wise, as many were stored before SNCF numbers went to 6 digits or they transferred between sectors. 09's thus should be 93 series and your 51's seem to be six digit locomotive numbers already without a prefix* This I believe is the same with the 88. Research required.



Also an odd one out visitor wise, (4)60067. One of the modern Vossloh freight diesels that commonly now work with SNCF and FRET, this example clearly has been pinched from the main yard to assist with shunting of some of the newly arrived stored locomotives.

A guide to SNCF Numbering, as all French actual locomotive numbers are five digits, however there is a sorting digit which comes before the locomotive number. This applies to all except shunters;


For guidance;

Series 1xxxxx (passenger intercity locomotive)
Series 2xxxxx (passenger suburban locomotive)
Series 4xxxxx (freight locomotive)
Series 5xxxxx (regional use locomotive)
Series 6xxxxx (infrastructure locomotive)

Sotteville sidings 2016? No doubt some leavers and some still rusted to the rails, what else that shows up from other depots dotted around France will however always prove interesting!