Train of the Week

At some point in the past, as I was daydreaming about the Scandinavian skies, I wrote about the Alstom Coradia Nordic . They became quite active in the snowy north, having replaced a variety of vintage rolling stocks across a wide spectrum of services. Little did I know. They had cousins, the Coradia Continental, who made their way south to Germany. Some of them even settled right in my current backyard, humbly serving on the busy S-Bahn Rhein-Ruhr. Von Muellean in der Wikipedia auf Deutsch (Andreas Müller) - Eigenes Werk des ursprünglichen Hochladers, CC BY-SA 3.0 de , Link Von IPRobin - Eigenes Werk , CC-BY-SA 4.0 , Link These electric multiple-units are known as the Class 440 (newer versions are called the Class 1440). They had been roaming far and wide in the Vaterland since the late 2000s. Having a top authorized speed of 100 mph, these trainsets not only could operate in frequent-stop suburban commutes, they are fully capable of running as RegionalBahn or RegionalExpre...

I slacked off last week again, didn’t I. Anyhow, let’s continue with the Paella theme and check out the AVE Class 100. As you may recall, AVE stands for Alta Velocidad Española, the service name used by the Spanish national passenger operator, Renfe, on its high-speed trains. A Class 100 on the Madrid to Barcelona high-speed line The story here sounds similar to some of the other countries that got into the high-speed rail business by importing in the later parts of the 20th century. The Class 100, like the first KTX (Korea Train eXpress), are derived from the iconic TGV Atlantique. Like the KTX, the styling of the AVE Class 100 has been modified slightly, resulting in a more rounded nose. Nonetheless, it does not require any effort to spot the family resemblance. By SeeSchloss - Own work , CC BY-SA 2.5 , Link The trains went into service in 1992, after the first standard gauge high-speed line was completed in Spain from Madrid to Seville (it was almost going to be Iberian ...

A glorious 22 minutes (plus an arm and a leg, or 540 SEK), that's what it took me to get between Stockholm Central Station and Arlanda Airport. Sweden is home to many trains I had blogged about ( including this one ) over the years. It wasn't, until now, had I seen any of them in real life. In spite of being from North America, Swedish trains are wide. The 2+2 seating makes them look even wider on the inside (although it appears I had forgotten to take a picture of the train's interior). People would possibly have to shout across the row of seats in order to talk to their buddies on the other side of the aisle. Arlanda Express terminal at Stockholm Central Oh, by the way (as a PSA for people who plan to ride the train from Arlanda to Stockholm), there are three train stations in the underbellies of Arlanda Airport. Arlanda Central serves regular SJ and SL trains (which completely slipped my mind as soon as I saw the sign for the Arlanda Express), while Arla...

Three months ago, Amtrak released this video after signing a new deal to purchase the next-generation Acela Express from our old friend Alstom. It is called the Avelia Liberty. At the minute mark, it states that this train shares a common platform that has been proven in service. Hold on a minute, what common platform? Revenue service? What's an Avelia? Yes, that was a long-winded way of getting into today's topic, and let me do the Googling, so you don't have to (if you have not already, that is). According to Alstom's product web page, all of their current high-speed trains are now branded Avelia. This includes the Pendolino, the TGV Euroduplex, the AGV, and of course, our Avelia Liberty. What I find interesting, is the fact that this family name has yet to be mentioned much or marketed heavily at all. In fact, I don't think it is that good of an idea. Alstom's high-speed trains ranges are already very well known worldwide, so why cause confusion? This...

The train of this week is a modern electric passenger locomotive from Russia. It's called EP20 and it's the product of a collective effort between Alstom and CJSC Transmashholding , the largest Russian locomotive builder. You may remember this locomotive from recent news, because it's featured in some of the photographs in the articles on the commencing of Talgo sets on the Russian Railways (RZD). " 2 EP20 na Rostov Glavny " by Gwinogradow - Own work . Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons . Unlike the other European passenger locomotives, the EP20 has six axles, and uses somewhat of an unusual axle arrangement. Instead of using two 3-axle trucks, the EP20 has three 2-axle trucks (i.e. B-B-B). Locomotives like this do exist; they are just rarely seen outside of, say, Japan. " Фирменный поезд "Буревестник" " by Айнар - http://www.train-photo.ru/details.php?image_id=142288&mode=search . Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via W...

Transit news! The Ontario city of Ottawa has unveiled the LRV to be operated on their first ever LRT line, and it's an Alstom Citadis . The LRT line, Confederation Line , will open in 2017, in time for the 150th anniversary of Canada's Confederation. The New York State thanks Ottawa for the jobs created as a result of this order. Based on some web search, there are a few dozens of variants of the Citadis operating in piles of cities around the world. There is a nice little video made up by Alstom too that provides quite some good information on the Ottawa LRV. I guess I'll leave most of this post to that.

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 ...

One of the images in the post 2 weeks ago revealed another, earlier, record run of the TGV in 1981. That's what the video I'm posting will show this week. On 26 February 1981, the TGV Sud-Est no 100 set a world speed record for trains of 380 km/h, or in Her Majesty's units of measurement, 236 miles per hour.

I'd hope most people still remembered that breathtaking world speed record run of the TGV V150 in April 2007. I was in college at the time. I still remember the excitement I felt rushing home in order to stream the event live. Thanks to technology, many things we once have had to hear second hand can be witnessed at the happening. Thanks to YouTube, many things that have happened before us can be relived by a few keystrokes and clicks of the mouse. Let's rewind to 18 May 1990, when the TGV Atlantique no 325 has set the world speed record for trains at the time of 515.3 km/h. That's still a jaw dropping speed of 320 mph even for today. Enjoy this video from the French National Railways' official YouTube channel.

For a train blog that’s in existence for quite a number of years that’s had posts on equipment ranging from the humble neighborhood LRV to the latest and greatest post futuristic looking Japanese very-high-speed electric multiple units, the omittance of possibly one of the most famous trainset in the Western World is, at least in my mind, quite unacceptable. It is not that I don’t have anything to say about the TGV, or literally, the High Speed Train, the problem is quite the contrary. There is so much to say about this topic, I don’t know where to begin or end. In no way, the few words I am about to scribble down here will do this great engineering achievement by GEC-Alsthom (now Alstom) the justice it deserves. Hopefully though, it will provide somewhat of a understandable overview of some of the interesting facts that sum up this Concord of the land is all about. This is the beautiful high-speed train we are talking about here I will note that this post is dedicated to what I ...

Well I was going to finally write one about the TGV, or in English, the High Speed Train of France. But I went into the bush and camped all week so I hadn't any time to really get around to doing a good job. However, I've found myself this really well done HD video on YouTube of the trains that are running on the South-east High Speed Line, or en français, Ligne à Grande Vitesse Sud-Est, connecting Paris and Lyon. Enjoy. Next week, there will be some boring text.

Well I'll continue to ease into the TGV post by writing about another export model here. This time we shift our attention to Spain, a country currently having the second largest high speed rail network in the world. The high speed service in Spain, operated by state owned Renfe, is operated under the name AVE, Alta Velocidad Española, or Spanish High Speed. The AVE S-100 looks slightly more rounded than the TGV  The S-100 is the first true high speed train in Spain. The trainset was derived from the TGV Atlantique articulated push-pull trainset (unlike the Réseau or KTX, which the truck immediately behind the power car was powered as well). The first 8 of the 16 sets ordered were built by Alstom in France and the rest by CAF in Spain. Definitely looks a lot shorter than the KTX-I Unlike the KTX-I or TGV-K mentioned last week, the AVE S-100 came in a more standard 8-car consist featuring the TGV's signature articulating Jacobs trucks. First introduced in 1992,...

I realise that although this is a train blog, I have never written a single post on the famous high speed trains of France. Part of it is because I'm unsure if the literary skills and attention I'll be able to expend on these world famous trainsets will do them justice. So I'm thinking to get into the French Train à Grande Vitesse, which literally means High Speed Train in English, with some distractions and derivatives before talking about the actual TGV on the SNCF, Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français, the French National Railway. The TGV Réseau in France I'll start by writing about an export model of the TGV to Asia, most commonly known as the Korea Train eXpress, operated by the South Korean national railway Korail. The Korean TGV - the KTX Although being just a stone's throw away from Japan, well, relatively speaking, high speed rail was a recent development in South Korea, where the first line went into commercial service in 2004, 40 ye...

It has been a while since I've written about anything fast lately. Lately I've seen a picture of a new trainset being transported to Poland as I stumble around the web for train pictures. This trainset has proven to be quite popular among European countries and is known by many names. Developed by the former rail division of Fiat, now under Alstom of France, this class of trainsets is known by the manufacturer simply as the New Pendolino. Trenitalia ETR-600 Polish PKP ED250, brand new and shiny Now if there's a New Pendolino, there must have been an old one. There have been quite a few kinds of those too, the British Rail Class 390 and Finnish Sm3 are a couple of quick examples. A Pendolino is named so because of the fact that she is a tilting train (i.e. the body of the train tilts towards the center of the curve up to 8 degrees, which enables the train to be able to travel faster than non-tilt trains in windy territories). However there are exceptions, like th...

Last week I went long winded on the original Bullet Train from Japan. This week, I'm writing about a train having played somewhat of a similar role to the Series 0 but has never seen commercial service. She is the TGV 001, first of what has become the world famous fast train of Europe, le train à grande vitesse, the TGV, the high speed train. It is very evident that the TGV 001 set the general tone for styling of the later TGVs Unlike the later production TGVs, the TGV 001 is an experimental articulated gas turbine-electric trainset. Built by Alstom (then called GEC-Alsthom), this prototype trainset began testing in 1972. The SNCF, la Société Nationale des Chermins de fer Français, the French National Railways chose to power their fast train with fossil fuel and on board power generation in order to avoid the infrastructure cost of having to erect cantenaries along the railroad mainline. However this later became expensive and unpractical after the 1973 oil crisis. Al...

Since winter’s looming, I may as well shift gears into more of a Nordic theme this week. I am quite fascinated by Nordic railroad operations really. To me, the similarities in weather conditions and population densities along corridors in Nordic countries provide a complete, and concrete, set of evidence for that the lack of a viable passenger rail system in densely populated corridors in countries like Canada, is solely due to the lack of will, environmental consciousness, innovation, and the stubborn and absurd clinch to the lazy old ways. I need to say no more and a brief look at Via Rail’s timetable online suffices to support my statement. Back to the X40 (also, this link takes you to more exterior and interior pictures). The X40 is a double deck regional EMU (electric multiple unit) operated by Sweden’s national passenger railroad carrier SJ. She belongs to the Coradia family (more precisely, Coradia Duplex) of trains from French builder Alstom and is built in Germany. Sweden ...

It seems appropriate that I write about the British Rail Class 67 locomotive this week after all the Vossloh talk. The Class 67’s official model is JT42HW-HS. Sounds familiar? Yes, she’s an EMD. Well, sort of. Thirty copies of the Class 67 was built at the Alstom plant in Valencia, Spain for the English, Welsh, and Scottish Railway (EWS, now under DB Schenker) in 1999 and 2000 (yes, the plant later taken over by Vossloh). At her heart, a 12 cylinder 710 engine provides power. Unlike the Class 66 though, the Class 67 was meant to be a 125 mph passenger locomotive. Therefore, fabricated 2 axle high-speed trucks with frame mounted traction motors were equipped on this locomotive rather than a version of the HTC truck. Very nice looking locomotive IMO Weight (although the unit is not even 100 short tons) and clearance problems plagued the initial acceptance process on the Network Rail. By 2003, the problems were eventually resolved and all 30 Class 67s were approved for 125 mph s...

Well, why don't we keep talking about another Alstom Coradia while we are at it. If you've missed my old posts, so far we've talked about the not-so-successful-but-getting-better British Rail Class 180 Coradia Adelante, the Coradia Nordic, X60/1/2 and the Arlanda Express X3 , in Sweden, and last week, the Coradia LINT (well, which wasn't really a Coradia). This week I'll briefly write about this other Coradia DMU that's running in Britain, the Class 175 or Coradia 1000. Interior looks basic but functional Like the later Class 180, the 175 was built in Britain at Alstom's plant in Birmingham. 27 sets of 2 or 3-car trainsets (it's interesting to know that on a 2-car train, the cars are labeled only A and C with no car B in between) were built between 1999 and 2001, and the Class 175 was put in service in 2000 by First North Western (part of the later First TransPennine Express and Northern). In 2003 the sets were transferred to Arriva and had...

This week let's talk about a little regional DMU that we will soon be able to see/ride on in Ontario, the Coradia LINT by Alstom. LINT stands for Leichter Innovativer Nahverkehrstriebwagen, or Light Innovative Local Transport Rail Vehicle. Well, that didn't sound French at all did it... Apparently the family of DMUs was originally designed by Linke-Hofmann-Busch (LHB), a German company, which was acquired by Alstom in the 1990s. The LINT comes in 4 flavors, 27, 41, 54, and 81. Each number denotes the approximate overall length of the trainset in meters. Of the four, LINT 27 is a single car unit, and 41 is an articulated 2-car DMU sharing a single Jacobs bogie in the center. The new Ottawa O-Trains will be the Coradia LINT 41 (currently using Bombardier Talent ). LINT 41 or DB (German Railways) Class 648 Not all trucks are powered on these DMUs. The 27, 41, 54, and 81 have 1, 2, 3, and 4 powered trucks respectively. Trucks are mechanically driven by diesel engines mo...

This week let's tall about this EMU some Big Bang Theory fans may recall from the opening. You may remember the red nose and slender body of this 7-car trainset. Still doesn't ring a bell? Well, maybe this picture below will remind you. She's the ICN , InterCity-Neigezug (inter city tilt train), or RABDe 500 by SBB-CFF-FFS designation. Technically she is half Italian, with exterior design by Pinifarina, and tilting mechanism by Fiat (right, builder of Pendolino, later absorbed by Alstom). The rest of her is genuine Swiss engineering, by Adtranz in Zurich, now part of Bombardier. The ICN serves several lines in Switzerland and can be seen in all major cities. The 8 traction motors equipped in the end 4 cars produce a total of 6,970 horsepower and the ICN achieves a top speed of 125 mph where track speed permits. A total of 44 sets have been built and put in service between 2000 and 2005. The ICN tilting around a curve