ND4 import background

After the founding of New China, China's economy has developed rapidly. With the rapid advancement of economic construction, logistics and transportation have injected fresh blood into the development of various places, and railway transportation plays a vital role. . At that time, the main line locomotives of China's railways were all steam locomotives. Looking at the world, the demand was very low. In the 1950s, China urgently needed a large number of diesel locomotives to serve as the main force of transportation. Firstly, to increase the speed of passenger trains and ensure punctuality, and secondly to improve freight locomotives. cargo capacity and speed to improve railway transportation volume and transportation efficiency. At that time, China did not have the technology to design and manufacture diesel locomotives on its own. Workers at the Dalian Locomotive and Rolling Stock Factory, the country's largest locomotive company, told the technicians that as long as the engineers could produce the drawings, we promised to build a diesel locomotive within two months. In view of this In this situation, in 1956 and 1957, Dalian Locomotive Factory sent two groups of technicians to the Soviet Union to learn the design and manufacturing technology of diesel locomotives. In the autumn of 1957, a diesel locomotive design team was established, using the Soviet Union's ТЭ3 DC electric mainline diesel locomotive as a model. Design and manufacturing were carried out, and all design work was completed by June 1958. At the end of September of the same year, two main-line passenger and freight diesel locomotives of the Dragon type were manufactured. The two locomotives were reconnected, with a power of 2942 kilowatts and a total of 4000 horsepower. They were the earliest high-power engines in New China. diesel locomotive. However, due to the hasty launch and the immaturity of China's internal combustion locomotive technology, the performance of the Julong locomotive was not up to standard and it was quickly scrapped. After Julong was scrapped, all technical staff of Dalian Locomotive carried out a series of improvement measures based on the experience of designing Julong. In 1964, they designed the Dongfeng Type 1 diesel locomotive and put it into mass production. It was also a dual-engine reconnection with high power. 3000 kilowatts, 706 units were manufactured. At this time, the performance of the Dongfeng Type 1 locomotive was still unreliable, with high fuel consumption and high failure rate. It could not meet the development needs of China's railway transportation industry. In the future, the Ministry of Railways will continue to develop new high-power locomotives. The task of diesel locomotives was handed over to Dalian Locomotive Factory. In 1969, Dalian Locomotive Factory began to develop new locomotives. This was during the Cultural Revolution. Dalian Locomotive Factory delayed its development for many years due to the rectification movement. Until 1972, new locomotives were still delayed. There was no finalization, let alone mass production, so the Ministry of Railways had to import main line heavy-duty freight locomotives again to alleviate the urgent need. This is the ND4 electric transmission diesel locomotive. In 1973, 50 units were imported from the French Alstom company, all of which were assigned to Fengtai, Beijing. The locomotive depot is used for heavy-load freight on the Fengsha Line. It was not until 1974 that Dalian Locomotive developed the Dongfeng 4A diesel locomotive, of which No. 0002 is the famous Mao Zedong locomotive. Compared with the ND4, the technology is still very backward, and key parameters such as performance and vehicle quality are not the same. Not only that, the failure rate and fuel consumption rate of Dongfeng 4A locomotives in the early stages of production were ridiculously high. There was even a folk joke circulating in Beijing at that time that Dongfeng 4A could not run from Dongdan to Xidan. In this case, Dongfeng 4A locomotives were still mass-produced. By 1982, nearly 900 units were produced. Due to design defects, batch quality problems occurred in the locomotives. A large number of locomotives were left in the locomotive depot to be repaired. Therefore, the Dalian Locomotive Factory continued to manufacture problem vehicles while improving and testing them for nearly 10 years. In the embarrassing situation, in December 1982, after nearly 10 years of improvements, the new Dongfeng 4B high-power diesel locomotive was finally designed. The performance of the locomotive was greatly improved, the failure rate was greatly reduced, and the fuel consumption rate was also reduced. , various auxiliary facilities and humanized design have made a qualitative leap, reaching the most advanced domestic level at that time, but compared with international products of the same period, they are still very backward. Dongfeng 4B locomotives have been undergoing various tests in the following years. During the test period, China imported 420 heavy-duty high-power mainline freight locomotives from GE Company of the United States from 1984 to 1986, which are the famous ND5 diesel locomotives. By 1984, all tests of the Dongfeng 4B diesel locomotive were completed, meeting the design requirements, and the performance was very good. It was fully capable of meeting China Railway's demand for high-power and heavy-duty locomotives. In this way, the Dongfeng 4B locomotive entered a period of extra-large mass production. , designated by the country as a locomotive to replace imported products, and China has completely ended the history of importing a large number of locomotives.

By the time Dongfeng 4B locomotives were discontinued, China had produced more than 4,500 units. Dongfeng 4B locomotives were the pride of the Chinese people.