Keith Fender offers a first look at the new train for the Glasgow underground
A HIGHLIGHT of the bi-annual InnoTrans trade fair in Berlin is the outdoor rolling stock display. This year’s show, the twelfth and largest yet with over 3,000 exhibitors from more than 60 countries, saw several trains destined for the UK on display.
Seen for the first time was Stadler’s new EMU offering for the Glasgow Subway. The part-articulated 1,219-mm gauge EMUs incorporate cantilevered vehicles without bogies on some vehicles. A £200 million contract was awarded in 2016 to a joint venture of Stadler and Ansaldo, with the rolling stock component valued at £92 million for a fleet of 17x4-car units. Entry into service is planned from 2020, with Ansaldo providing a new signalling and control system and a new control centre which will eventually facilitate a move to driverless operation.
Also exhibited by Stadler was a Class 755 Flirt BMU for Greater Anglia (see page 74 for more detail on these), while the third UK exhibit came from Siemens in the shape of the Class 717 Desiro City for Great Northern suburban services into Moorgate.
Exhibits destined for the continent included the latest battery-equipped version of Siemens’ Desiro ML EMU (for Austrian state rail operator ÖBB) and a Bombardier Talent 3 EMU for ÖBB regional services. The new double deck ‘Rock’ EMU for Italian national operator Trenitalia, built by Hitachi in its Italian factories, was on show alongside the Alstom Coradia Stream, also built in Italy for Trenitalia. One of the biggest surprise exhibits was a carbon fibre body shell metro EMU car from CRRC in China; the Chinese ‘Cetrova’ metro is equipped with internet enabled windows that work as touchscreens!
New locomotives on display included the Smartron, Siemens’ low-cost AC-only version of the company’s Vectron model, which was displayed alongside the 500th-built Vectron, one of 150 on order for ÖBB. Stadler displayed the first of 10 ‘Eurodual’ Co-Co bi-mode locos destined for German freight operator HVLE; designed and built in Stadler’s Spanish factory, these are bigger in all dimensions than the UK Class 88. The ‘Eurodual’ is designed for more than just shunting away from the overhead wires – it has the same 2,800kW diesel engine as the UK Class 68!
Alternative energy sources are now big business, as InnoTrans showed. Alstom displayed its four-axle H4 hybrid loco for Swiss Federal Railway SBB’s network maintenance trains, whilst Chinese company CRRC had the first of its four-axle hybrid locos for a similar role with Deutsche Bahn on the Hamburg S-Bahn. Turkish manufacturer Tülomsas displayed a centre cab Turkish railways (TCDD) class DE11000 four-axle diesel loco, rebuilt as a hybrid with a smaller diesel engine than previously and mainly powered by lithium-ion batteries. Vossloh Locomotives used the show to launch its hybrid option for its DE18 mid-power four-axle diesel-electric locos – with a battery module to enable operation without diesel (for example in areas where for noise or emissions reduction reasons diesel operation is not optimal); Vossloh can offer the hybrid version as new or as a rebuild option for the locos already in use in several European countries. More detailed coverage of InnoTrans will follow in our November issue.
