Ce que j'aime sur ces trains c'est les grandes fenêtres d'une part mais aussi la moquette et ce bleu si particulier à bord ! C'est vraiment un de mes trains favoris !
If you call this railcar small, you should see ČD class 810 (still operating, yes). However, they never had a problem with signalling in our country eventhough they are much smaller.
Yeah, this is a small but nice Railcar. Still operates in the Border Region Germany /Czechia where i Live. Always a funny and slightly nostalgic Journey in this Thing. They call i the " Bohemian Mary " here😂
I totally agree - these trains are not suited to such long journeys, especially if you can't get a seat! I used to travel on these to work, a 20-minute trip. That's what they're good for. An AGC or two would be much better on this route. Great trip report, as always!
Thankfully the Pacers have now been withdrawn from service and confined to heritage lines. These trains show what the Pacers could of been like if the government gave a fig about the north though!
I remember travelling on one of the DB units travelling along the Leipzig-Chemnitz line and found them to be quite nice. Could imagine such a style of unit with big windows to admire the view coming in handy on some routes in the UK. Would need to fit in the loading gauge, so no worries about any X73500s leaving France!
They are nice, but prone to trouble. There are therefore frequent breakdowns and vehicle shortages, particularly on the Merseburg - Querfurt and Weißenfels - Zeitz routes. The very first vehicles delivered to the DB that do not have 1st class are used there. But the vehicles used between Leipzig and Geithain also repeatedly cause problems. Those in Thuringia, on the other hand, are more reliable, which is probably also due to the better workshop (in Erfurt).
Thank you for the compliment from Erfurt, but to be fair it has to be said that the vehicles between Leipzig and Geithain are also used more heavily in an S-Bahn-like service. In the event of major disruptions or maintenance, the vehicles also come to us in Erfurt because we simply have more experience with them. Especially as the vehicles are also quite maintenance-unfriendly, especially in the engine and transmission area. @@themazeLE
If you ever find yourself in Madrid you should try the C-9 commuter line. It is a meter-gauge railway that goes up in the mountains of the Sierra de Guadarrama with trains from the 70s! It is a short ride, so it is perfect if you are in Madrid a short time!
Not really fair until about 8 yr ago we had the much older units on the Limoges Angouleme route We then got the upgrade but for 6 years have had to revert to buses as sncf allowed the track to deteriorate so much it's unsafe and spent 6 years arguing with local government over who is paying for the repairs
Great video - we live near Aurillac and use the trains to Figeac and Toulouse - mostly single track so lots of delays but always very curteous staff , thsnk you
I've heard them being called the toilet car or porta-potty here in Germany, because the (very nice and accessible) toilet uses between a quarter and a third of the entire floor space of the unit. :)
J' ai fait le trajet Clermont- Ferrand Aurillac l ' année dernière, très beau trajet surtout sur la partie Cantalienne et le matériel est très bien, belle couleur, confort...
I agree that a class 735 railcar is not suitable for long journeys. But each single car has four axles and eight wheels. Checking with my Platform 5 guide to French Trains (page 85), the wheel arrangement is given as 1A-A1. That in effect means that there are two BOGIES, but only the inner axle is powered. The Platform 5 guide also refers to the problem with these railcars sometimes not operating track circuits.
For some reason, I really like railcars. Maybe it's because it's the smallest possible passenger train, and I like miniature things (including miniature trains).
I rode one between Mullheim (Germany) and Mulhouse (France) in the autumn 2022. It was very charming little train with all of noises like the long distance omnibus. What's amazing was that nobody was wearing masks that day in the train despite Germany's idiotic mask mandate. None of the SNCF conductors bother to enforce everyone to mask up on the German portion of route. So blissful wonderful!
Such small railcars (810) defended and saved branch lines in Czech Republic from being closed and dismantled - and they're using it till today (both railcars and railway lines). Unfortunately Poland had different way of thinking and only in 1999 they've closed more than 1kkm of railway lines which all in all results in being first in EU in amount of cars per 1000 inhabitants (2022).
Smallest railcar is the Z 100, isn’t it ? Also this is sometimes up to 2xAGC so the composition is super random in Toulouse-Clermont. Great video through real France 😌
Nice train, but there's something I didn't understand: you mentioned that it has four (4) wheels. Does it mean that it doesn't run on bogies but on single axles like the Pacer in the UK or Schienenbus in Germany (as well as the equivalent in Czechia, Hungary etc)? And despite this they are allowed to go140 km/h?
Finally Thibault made a video about this nice little train. I have been writing in the comments that he has to do these small trains, and Thibault delivers :)
That's funny and made me laugh :) Blaming no snow on the day on "climate change". If only we could count each week of every year to be exactly the same. Another great, and informative, (and funny) vid. Thanks!!
The capacity on this relation (Aurillac - Clermont) is quite often up to the limit when it's only two ATERs, but they sometime use three or AGCs. What's quite odd is that for the limited Toulouse - Aurillac service, they use a liO AGC from Occitanie, but for the full Toulouse - Clermont service it's always two ATERs. Even funnier is that the trip can cost less for young people when booking Clermont - Toulouse, which fall under Région Occitanie's prices, than booking the AURA price Clermont - Aurillac.
They were also ordered and operated in Luxembourg by CFL, but they later sold them to SNCF as they were too small, and all lines in Luxembourg are electrified
I rode the blue whales for 20 years now - on the line between Strasbourg and Offenburg. Generally they are lovely and I much prefer them to German RS1 shuttles that are also used on the same line - they have much comfier seats and an aircon! However they are going to be replaced with brand new trains starting from 2025, and while I will miss our whales for nostalgic reasons - it's definitely the time for them to go. The issues are numerous: 1. Capacity - it seems that they can only operate up to a double formation max (as in your video) and that is increasingly not enough here. 2. Electrification - the line to Offenburg was electrified long time ago (early 2000s I believe) and it's time to replace the diesels with modern EMUs. 3. Speed - the line had its speed increased to 200km/h and new trains will make full use of that. 4. Unification - both blue whales and German RS1s will be replaced by a single unified train fleet, which will be nice for consistency. They also have single leaf doors and the weirdest placement of door open/close buttons I've ever seen.
Please do more trips within France. Thinking of France people thing of TGV which is maintained great but what is with all the other traffic on smaller routes? I liked this trip so much but the train was crowded, people pay high fares and than thy have to stand for hours? Not good.
Speaking of the blue whale X73500 there's the other version which itself can run onto Austrian ÖBB Infra Deutsche Bahn Netze Punktförmige Zugbeeinflussung Sifa tracks the X73900 replacement for those B85500
Alors en soit, une UM2 de 73500 a la même capacité qu'un AGC 3 caisses 😉 Il aurait fallu une UM3 de 73500 (qui ducoup, aurait la même capacité qu'un AGC/Régiolis 4 caisses)
Nice report thibault, reminds me of the time in Germany when we were told our train was terminated and we’d to get the bus to the station the train was supposed to go to, yep the bus was a train similar to this one, I thought there was something lost in translation but I was told yes the train was called a bus because it served local traffic, perhaps someone with more knowledge about the German rail system could explain it better
IDK exactly how it is in Germany but I am from its neighbour country to the north, Denmark. And here in Denmark we have something thats a bit similar. Basically here we have 2 different rail systems. We have the national railway system that is usually run either by DSB, or with operations contracted out to Arriva (soon to be renamed GoCollective). And then we have the "Private" railways. The private railways arent really private per say but historically all their shares were usually owned by local authorities and maybe a local businessman or 2. The private railways were always secondary routes and built to a lower quality standard. In the 70's, and 80's when regional transit agencies started to be formed across Denmark on a county level, the private railways were incorporated into them, and treated similarly to bus lines. This includes fare integration, so the same tickets were valid for buses and the private railways, which weren't the case for the state railways. In 2007 the counties were dismantled and replaced by regions but the roles of these lines stayed the same generally. And in many regions there's still no ticket integration between local transit and the state railways or Arrivas trains, but there is to the local "private" railways. But since the 2010's, some of these regionally run private railways have taken over some state railway routes. Notably in Northern Jutland, and on a line in Zealand where operations were handed over directly. And in Western Jutland a state railway line switched hands to the regional operator through a tender. In Denmark, all of these private railway lines are run with small 2 car DMU's. Most commonly Alstom Lint 41's, but also Siemens Desiro's, Adtranz IC2's, and Düwag Regio-Sprinters. And several of these railways are now considering switching to battery trains. One operator has already placed an order for 7 Siemens Mireo battery trains, and another made a tender, awarded the contract to CAF, but then cancelled it due to the tender being poorly run and are now redoing the tender.
@@drdewott9154 thanks for the very detailed explanation, that certainly helps me understand the workings of the local systems, next time I’m on holiday in northern Germany I’ll certainly try my best to visit Denmark, hi from Ireland
What are the tracks like on this "rural" service? well maintained and smooth? or rough ? In terms of equipment, I suspect this has to do with what division of SNCF has that route and what equipment that division is allowed to have. Do you know if these trains are transmission from diesel engines, or are they diesel electric traction? In Canada, the RDCs from Budd were transmission. But they could put any number of cars on it. Our commuter trains in montreal (Rogaud line) before 1981 would sometimes have 9 of them strung together. But VIA in intercity service such as Montréal Ottawa or Montral Québec would only use 3 or 4 max (above which a loco hauled train is less costly to operate). RDCs hit 160kmh on a straight stretch of track near Montréal coing back from Ottawa.
AFAIK: Tracks were rebuilt/renovated over the last few years so the ride is pretty smooth. The ATERs are diesel engines, but this line also sees AGC Trains with diesel electric transmission.
It is not. It applies only to newspapers, TV or cinema. Or photographs if they intend to sell their work. RU-vid content creators can freely film people, as long as it is filmed in public spaces.
Is it the longest TER route in France (I mean Toulouse - Clermont-Ferrand) or there is sth longer (I guess Paris-Lyon by TER is a bit shorter, around 5hrs)?
Avec Marseille Briançon, Lyon Tours, et Nîmes Clermont, ce sont bien les 4 TER les plus longs de France il me semble. Mais 6h dans un X73500 c'est éprouvant, d'autant plus sans prise électrique
L'absence de prises pour recharger les portables dans le Clermont - Aurillac n'est pas digne de la Région AURA - qui est l'Autorité de Mobilité si on cherche qui commande, paye et donc décide dans ce Pays. For all of you, Cantal (Aurillac) is the heart of France, its heaven for people, landscape, food and art de vivre.
Wouldn't work in the U. S. The FRA would not allow a rail car with only four wheels for the reasons stated in the video. So I guess Stadler Flirt is still the best European option available here for new self-propelled Diesel trains.
In fairness, very few passengers travel from Clermont Ferrant to Toulouse, except maybe for some students who are short of money (this is a regional train, and it is subsidized by the region. The fare was €2 (!)) Most passengers leaving Clermont Ferrand call at some intermediate station, specially since the end section can be reached through other, fastest train lines. Passengers in intermediate stations usually use this train to go to the nearest « big » station where they can catch a fast train. All in all, for most people, travel time onboard is less than two hours.
Are there any dual-power trains that could be reviewed? That is: able to utilize catenary electric power, as well as also able to run on diesel power on non-electrified tracks.
In Italy HTR type trains made by hitachi have just begun their operation and they fulfill a similar role as the train in this video. The H stands for hybrid as a matter of fact.
Having just viewed the trip by X73500 (Clermont-Ferrand) I fear that proposed commuter train from Fort Lauderdale to Miami (by FEC tracks) FL, USA, will become as crowded as the rail service shown on your video (you tube), especially for special events (concert or basketball). Can you show an example of short- length ride which features a double-decker trainset for the service? My opinion for the ideal regional passenger rail service in South Florida would be a design of five units of double-decker rail cars: a control-cab coach at each end; two intermediate coaches, plus a double-decker "power-pack" unit which would feature a Hydrogen (H2) reserve to fuel a modified diesel motor and H2 fueled fuel cells (close to zero emissions). Why? In this part of Florida the main auto route is highly-congested Interstate 95 where vehicle traffic often stops or slows to less than 35 km/h - 21mi/h in mid-afternoon (with greater emissions). The area needs more frequent passenger trains to have greater capacity and more frequency. News flash: Iceberg A-23-a has broken away from the Antarctic ice sheet and into the open ocean. It is said to be slightly larger than the geographic size of the State of Rhode Island. I am not persuaded that the policy lunge (by USA government) toward 65% EV motor vehicles in North America will be accomplished by 2035. Perhaps more passenger train services would be a more reasonable goal. Any comments? 26 JAN. 2024
Well hitachi Italy has made such type of train (sort of). It is an hybrid (HTR) train with 3 different engines, one grid powered, one disesel powered and one battery powered, although not H2 powered. The only thing is that it is not a double decker train, since it is used in lines with little demand, but the same company makes a double decker train with the same platform, the etr 512, which is basically the trainset used in high demand regional corridors.
oh ! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-shbtJi7N2I8.htmlsi=-1S3theUpzsFgiwP&t=402 - la gare de Bourg Saint Maurice est connectée avec le funiculaire des Arcs !
j'ai la haine contre ce train personnellement je trouve c'est le pire design de tous, on se retrouve serré avec les autres passagers et les sièges sont agencés de manière trop étrange... Heureusement que je tombe pas souvent dessus Mon préféré qui circule sur ma voie c'est le Régiolis avec ses sièges violets, le best
