Train of the Week

News (well, as usual, with some lag)! The first ever High Speed Train has entered service in Poland! This marks the official entry in the world high speed ranks and I think it's quite an historical week in Polish history. Is it just me or does it look a little sad from this angle...? So what does the Polish High Speed Train look like? Well, it's actually quite a familiar one, the Pendolino. This Pendolino looks the same as many other Pendolinos used across Europe actually. She's based on the New Pendolino platform, with somewhat of an identical exterior to the Italian ETR-600. But similiar to the Chinese CRH5, the ED250 (oh btw this is what this Polish Pendolino is called) doesn't tilt. And guess what, this ED250 has set the speed record both for Poland and for Pendolinos this year with a very respectable 293 km/h or 182 mph. Anyway, the link in the paragraph below will have some more info on the ED250 as well. I think I'm really digging the color scheme ...

So I've been doing some more railroad browsing on the website, and this is the one of the news/rumor I've stumbled upon lately (it's actually 7 December today as I'm writing this... but I think I'll still stick to my weekly schedule and post this whenever this is supposed to be published). Some time ago I posted about the Pacer used on brand lines in the North of England. It's a 2-car DMU with 4 steel wheels attached to each car that's based on the body of a Leyland bus. I've ridden them for hours at a time during my trips to England, and to be honest, they are loud, rattly, the ride is really crappy. They've been in service for quite a number of years now. Recently, certain people have started asking about replacement. In an effort to save money, one party has proposed something rather quite interesting, which is to take the retired D78 Stock from London Underground, sling a diesel engine under the floor, hook it up to a generator so it can powe...

We go international this week, to South Korea, and check out this quite sharp looking EMU operated by their national railroad Korail. Somehow the EMUs in Korea, as far as I've researched, have these ridiculously long series number. I wonder if in real life people call them the "three hundred and sixty-eight thousand" or simply Series 368 like British Rail (in this case, say there's a BR Class 368, the sets would then be numbered 368xyz). So I guess on this blog, I'm gonna make the executive decision to refer to this EMU as the Series 368. Yes the Series 368 is Korean and yes she is built by Hyundai Rotem, a company that's been trying to expand their rolling stock market overseas in the recent years. In fact, the, what I consider iconic, Silverliner is now a product of the Rotem in North America. This EMU comes in 8 car sets, of which 4 cars are powered by 4 x 250 kW (335 hp). For some reason, the mid-train 2 of the 8 cars are double decked, and these are a...

Today's post is again, inspired by a news article I read online. Apparently, National Express has just unveiled their Talent 2 trains that are set to enter regional services in Germany a year from now. I'm sure the original Talent isn't too strange to riders in Europe, although some may not know that is her name. In fact, a few of them can even be found in North America if you look carefully enough. The O Train for example, a short stubby commuter rail line in the Canadian capital of Ottawa, is a diesel version of the original Bombardier Talent. Pretty nice looking little thing really So the Talent 2 is an articulated regional EMU that comes in 2-6 car consists. The trucks on the ends are powered and every other one in between are powered for sets longer than 2 cars (so therefore, 2 and 3 car sets have 2 powered trucks, 4 and 5 car sets have 3, and 6 car sets have 4). Each truck has an power output of 1 010 kW or 1 354 Her Majesty's horsepower, you figure out ...