The V63 class is the most powerful engine class in Hungary. Originally it has been developed for heavy personal and freight trains. The high-speed IC and EC trains also needed a powerful engine, that's why some of them were regeared for 160km/h maximal speed. It is called by the engine drivers as "Gigant". (That means some kind of giant in Hungarian). The shape of this loco is not "futuristic", but the remarkable power and some other factors ;-) have made this engine one of our favourites...
The first piece of our gigant collection from 1980.
(I was 9 years old... JImre :-) )
An article about "NEW STRONGER
ELECTRIC LOCOS" (Népszabadság,479K).
The history of the V63 Gigant Club started in 1989. The two foundation members: Imre Jákli and László Balogh started the university in Budapest. We have to travel home at the weekends. (We were born in Pápa) At that time Gigants were brand new locomotives, since the latest ones came ot from the factory in 1988 and usually they pulled our trains home. We loved them for the first sight, but we didn't know their names.
In 1993 the Somogy-express was pulled by two Gigants (013,018) in the most of the time. László once went to the engine driver and asked some things about the V63 locomotives. The engine driver told him, that the V63 class locomotives have a given name: GIGANT. By that time we called us as "Gigantomaniacs".
Later, when the first modified Gigants came out László have
made a photo of
V63 154).
I've scanned it (at that time we had only a grayscale scanner)
This picture was our first Gigant picture. I've made the first club logo.
1993 was the foundation year of the "real" Gigant Club.
Later we systematically went to the railway stations and started to
collect beautiful pictures of Gigants. We manage to scan the
pictures in color and I've made the second generation of the
club identification card.
The current "official" identification card for the outside members:
The inside members have an identification card, with the photo and the
name of the owner, printed of a plastic card, like a phonecard.
In december 1994 I've found the European Railway server with many many railway pictures. We've contacted with Marco van Uden and we've sent some engine photos. Marco suggested us to make an own server. We've started to work and in February 1995 the Gigant Club WWW server started to work. We've met new enthusiants via the WEB and started to extend the WWW server.
All club members loved railway from childhood, but not with such a passion as in this club. The INTERNET brought us together in the current form. Now our main goal is to maintain this server, to collect valuable data, photos etc. for the public about our country's railway.
If you have some questions, problems, suggestions or additions,
please contact the V63 Gigant Club.