When the approximately 650 kilometer long line from the port of Nouadhibou to the ore mine near Zouérate was built in Mauritania between 1960 and 1963, MIFERMA (Société anonyme des Mines de fer de Mauritanie) procured two series of six-axle diesel locomotives from Alsthom in France, the CC # 01 to # 21 (built 1961 to 1968) with two SACM prime movers each. Around 1973/74, 5 more locomotives of the same type were built, the CC # 22 to # 26. The MIFERMA CC were based upon the SNCF Class CC 65000, a French passenger diesel locomotive also built by Alsthom. However, the MIFERMA locomotives had more powerful versions of the two SACM engines with a total output of about 2700 HP. They were also equipped with a roof mounted "skyline casing", which housed special filtration equipment, to deal with the unusually sandy and dusty Saharan atmospheric conditions. Another change which made them differ from the CC 65000s was their use of different bogie trucks (these being related to the trucks used on the CC 14000s) and a lower carbody with cabs taken from the CC 7100s. The cabs were slightly altered as they featured an extra center cab door on each end. The 26 locomotives were then supported from 1981 by the first american SDL40-2 locomotives from EMD and gradually replaced with the procurement of further locomotives from the USA. Most of the CCs were used until around 1997 for the iron ore trains, the last one, CC # 19, until 2009 in passenger service. The locomotives with their huge sand filters on the roof were not dismantled and melted down, but simply cannibalized and stored. Most of them can still be found today, namely 20 wrecks at F'derîk. The locomotive in the left row in front are CC # 20, 22 and 21. Five more MIFERMA CCs stand near the SNIM workshop in Nouadhibou. The MIFERMA procured too 12 fouraxle BB locomitives BB # 01 to # 12 built by Brissonneau et Lotz with 850 HP MGO prime movers from SACM. Two of them can be seen in the middle.
