Train of the Week

Research on running high speed trains on existing railroad network began jointly by Deutsche Bahn and a group of railroad engineering companies (Siemens, Krauss-Maffei, Krupp - now ThyssenKrupp, Thyssen - now Thyssen Krupp, Henschel - now Bombardier, AEG - now Bombardier, and BBC - now Bombardier) in 1974, a year after (10 years after Japan launched the famous bullet train running at 130 mph) DB launched its 125 mph Inter City service with locomotive hauled trains much like the Northeast Regional . The decision came in 1982 that a test train with 2 locomotives (DB Class 410) permanently coupled to 3 cars be built to evaluate the concept of such a train. This train was dubbed the Inter City Experimental , delivered in 1985, the forefather of the sleek high speed trains today running DB’s Inter City Express services. The Inter City Experimental was renamed to ICE V and continued to run as a test train for research and evaluation purposes until 1998, 7 years after ICE 1 (DB Class 401)

Let's having some Italian again and Ferrovie dello Stato means State Railways I believe. The ETR 200 (Elettro Treno Rapido, or Rapid Electric Train) is one of the pioneers in world high-speed train development. She was 3 car articulated electric multiple unit designed in the 1930s by Breda for Italy’s newly electrified Milan-Naples main line. The first ETR 200 was introduced in service in 1937 on the Bologna-Rome-Naples line and had a top speed of 100 mph and was featured in the Universal Exposition in New York. In 1939, one of the ETR 200 sets set a speed record of 126 mph. Quite a thing of beauty I must say

They say that a picture says a thousand words. So this week I'll let the picture here say the rest of this post. It is a map. And for those of us who live in North America and therefore are faint hearted in the railroad sense, it will take your breath away, big time. It is a map of rail transport in Greater London, and it includes, again in our English, mainline railroads, streetcars, subways, and interurbans. Click on the above snapshot to see the original document and have fun with it!

This week's post is fairly easy to do thanks to an email I've received from NTV's marketing team. I guess I'll just post some more stuff about the beautiful NTV Italo AGV. Here's the link to the video from the media kit. And of course, here's a nice little document with some very interesting links as well (yeah you may wanna go ahead and enlarge in order to read). Enjoy!

The 2009 Tube Stock took me from London Euston to Victoria via the Victoria Underground Line on the second last day of my trip. I hadn't used the London Underground service much because I tended to stay out of the crowd the couple times I visited England. Nevertheless riding the London Underground was a very interesting experience and would intrigue any rail buff. Tube stations were bigger than most passenger train stations in North America, imagine yourself in a subway station trying to get to say Platform 8 to make a connection from Platform 3? Nice eh? Well this time I didn't have to change trains in the Tube though, because the Victoria Line directly connected 4 major Central London National Rail terminals, St Pancras, King's Cross, Euston, and Victoria (last time I visited England, in 2009, I did do some changing around to get from Paddington to Euston, Waterloo, and some other places). TTC Subway riders will find the 2009 Tube Stock familiar in the very faint sens