Nicole's recent post of a video showing Russian locomotives shooting massive flames out the exhaust got me to wondering about the technical heritage of Russian diesel locomotives.
In general terms, it appears that the earliest Russian diesel locomotives in the 1920's built on experiences with German products. However, after World War 2 it appears the Russians were increasingly influenced by American railroad technology.
Russia received substantial "lend-lease" aid from the USA during World War 2, including steam locomotives and Alco RSD-1 diesel locomotives. After the war, they produced some remarkably similar locomotives themselves. I think we know that the Russians have "borrowed" a lot of American railroad technology through the decades, and some of that was passed on to Chinese railways.
Many postwar Russian diesel locomotives used a probable copy of Fairbanks-Morse opposed-piston engines.
http://www.railroad.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=57148&f=7
The Russian engine is a derivative of the Fairbanks Morse design: the page claims it was built under license, which, if true, is surprising given the relations between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. at the time. Perhaps the Russians negotiated a license at the end of WW II, in the brief period before the Cold War set in (the period in which, to cite another railroad example, GE built the "Little Joe" electric locomotives for the Soviet railways)? ** On the internal anatomy of the TE-3, Westwood says: "It employed opposed-piston diesels (said to be derived from American Fairbanks-Morse engines used on small craft received by the Red Navy during the war)."
Which, I am afraid, is the nearest thing to "documentation" I've found on how the F-M technology got transferred to the USSR. Note that Westwood is not a naval historian, so his use of the term "small craft" is perhaps loose. The two best-known United States Navy applications of F-M engines during WW II were on submarines and destroyer escorts, and no vessels of these types were supplied to the Red Navy under Lend Lease. On the other hand, three American-built icebreakers (not exactly "small craft" at 289 feet long!) were lent to the Russians in the early 1940s (returned to the U.S. about 1950). These were of what seems to be called the "Burton Island" class (why I don't know: Burton Island herself was not the first of the class), and each was powered by six ten-cylinder F-M engines. Perhaps one of these spent time in a Russian shipyard under "repairs" with Soviet engineers carefully reverse-engineering blueprints from its engines! But I can't say for certain.
I would welcome any substantive additions of information to this topic. I will be doing additional research myself.
