On 7 April 2004 an interesting railway event took place in Bulgaria. The recently modernised locomotive 46-242-4 (home depot Burgas) attempted to cover the distance between Plovdiv and Sofia for the shortest time possible with the famous train The White Horse. This is an express train between Plovdiv and Vraca carrying its name because of the unique colour of the cars used on this line only. The aim was to break the 2 hour barrier for the trip. Unfortunately, the attempt was unsuccessful with an unscheduled pause in Septemvri and infrastructure problems spoiling the efforts of the locomotive and its crew. The train stopped the clock at 2 hours 12 minutes. Nevertheless, the machine performed very reliably, proving that the breaking of the record time between Plovdiv and Sofia of 1 hour 55 minutes is not far away in the future. 
<br> In the Central railway station of Sofia this locomotive has left the train and the trip to Vraca has been completed by locomotive 45-148-4. The change had been necessary due to the tight turns of the railway line in the gorge of the Iskar river through Stara Planina mountain. Locomotives of class 46 have a Co-Co wheel arrangement and cannot serve trains on this line.
<br> On the photo locomotive 46-242-4 exits the railway station Poduene in Sofia with the White Horse on its way back to Plovdiv.

Photo and scan by Miroslav Georgiev (Miroslav_SG@all.bg)
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Special thanks to Julien Nicolas and everybody else in the bgrail forum for providing the information!