The BB 25200 is a class of

electric locomotive An electric locomotive is a locomotive powered by electricity from overhead lines, a third rail or on-board energy storage such as a battery or a supercapacitor. Locomotives with on-board fuelled prime movers, such as diesel engines or ga ...

s in service with the French railways SNCF, built by Materiel de Traction Electrique (MTE) between 1967 and 1976. They are dual voltage locomotives working off both 1500 V DC and

25 kV 50 Hz AC Railway electrification systems using alternating current (AC) at are used worldwide, especially for high-speed rail. It is usually supplied at the standard utility frequency (typically 50 or 60Hz), which simplifies traction substations. The dev ...

. Designed by André Jacquemin, the class is a development of the earlier BB 25100 and BB 25150 locomotives with a higher top speed, being capable of . It is the dual voltage equivalent of the BB 9200 and BB 16000 classes.

Construction

The initial batch of 45 locomotives, numbers BB 25201–BB 25246, was built between 1965 and 1967. Subsequently, a further 5, numbers BB 25247–BB 25251, were built in 1975. In addition 4 Class BB 25150, numbers BB 25180, BB 25184, BB 25194 and BB 25195, were converted in 2003.

Service use

They were first used on passenger services from

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. ...

Le Mans Le Mans (, ) is a city in northwestern France on the Sarthe River where it meets the Huisne. Traditionally the capital of the province of Maine, it is now the capital of the Sarthe department and the seat of the Roman Catholic diocese of Le ...

and

Rennes Rennes (; br, Roazhon ; Gallo: ''Resnn''; ) is a city in the east of Brittany in northwestern France at the confluence of the Ille and the Vilaine. Rennes is the prefecture of the region of Brittany, as well as the Ille-et-Vilaine departm ...

until replaced by Class BB 22200 locomotives. After that they were redeployed to other services from Paris, mainly to

Le Havre Le Havre (, ; nrf, Lé Hâvre ) is a port city in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region of northern France. It is situated on the right bank of the estuary of the river Seine on the Channel southwest of the Pays de Caux, ver ...

. In 1987, 18 members of the class, BB 25201, BB 25202 and BB 25236–BB 25251, were converted to push-pull operation and redesignated as Class BB 25200R. They were allocated to

Chambéry Chambéry (, , ; Arpitan: ''Chambèri'') is the prefecture of the Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of eastern France. The population of the commune of Chambéry was 58,917 as of 2019, while the population of the Chamb ...

for services between

Grenoble lat, Gratianopolis , commune status = Prefecture and commune , image = Panorama grenoble.png , image size = , caption = From upper left: Panorama of the city, Grenoble’s cable cars, place Saint- ...

and

Lyon Lyon,, ; Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the third-largest city and second-largest metropolitan area of France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of ...

. In addition they worked services out of Paris to

Beauvais Beauvais ( , ; pcd, Bieuvais) is a city and commune in northern France, and prefecture of the Oise département, in the Hauts-de-France region, north of Paris. The commune of Beauvais had a population of 56,020 , making it the most populo ...

, Le Mans and Rennes. The class had all been withdrawn by 2012.

Names

Four members of the class received names.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sncf Class Bb 25200 25200 B-B locomotives 25200 BB 25200 Standard gauge locomotives of France Passenger locomotives