Deutsche VersionInnotrans 2008
I’ve just returned from Berlin, where I was at the Innotrans public days.
![An overview of the area.][bombardier]
Innotrans is an exhibition for mainly (though not only) railroad technology, which is held bi-annually, and has managed to develop into one of the largest of it’s kind. The special thing about it is that the weekend after it’s over, the outside area, where all the trains are parked, is opened to the general public for a nominal fee. It’s the first time I’ve been there so I don’t have any basis for comparison, but my gut feeling is that it rocked.
I’m going to post detailed descriptions and pictures later, you will be able to find them under the [“innotrans2008”][tag] (oh, by the way, new site feature, tags for images, w00t and stuff). Here a rough overview.
![Velaro, AGV and something by AnsaldoBreda][highspeed]
The stars were obviously the high-speed trains, including the Velaro RUS and of course Alsthom’s prototype AGV. In addition, there was the austrian Railjet, something for the Netherlands and Belgium by AnsaldoBreda and a few pieces of Talgo.
![Talent 2, Desiro ML and Coradia Continental][regionalzug]
A large focus was on regional railcars. The german bunch is now going into their second generation with Stadler FLIRT (actually swiss, but fits nicely into the set otherwise), Bombardier Talent 2, Siemens Desiro ML and Alstom Coradia Continental. Since there have been quite a few fusions over the past years, the wide variety of available trains has been reduced considerably. Default features of all these new trains include being nearly entirely low-floor by putting all parts of the drivetrain that don’t have to sit in the trucks on the roof, an arbitrary amount of powered axles and apparently now mainly electric propulsion, with diesel being more of an afterthought. Floor height, number of seat and even number of doors can all be changed long after the train has been sold. The reason for this is that there is a trend towards leasing trains for a limited period of time, which means it’s not useful to optimize it for one usage only and then never change that anymore.
![Siemens HE18, Voith Maxima 30C and Bombardier Traxx][loks]
As for locomotives, there was lots of interesting stuff, but by comparison surprisingly little new. The most important thing to keep in mind now is the distinction between three vaguely related companies that all start with the letters “Vo”. Vossloh España is, as the name says, the spanish division of Vossloh. It used to be the spanish division of Alstom, and it builds diesels with electric transmission, using engines by EMD. Vossloh Germany (which isn’t actually called that way, but calling it that way makes things easier) sits in the german city of Kiel and is in turn the german division of Vossloh, but is entirely independent. They produce diesels with hydraulic transmission, using components from number three, Voith. Voith sits in Kiel as well and has a long history as a parts manufacturer, but decided two years ago to get into the locomotive building business itself, and has already managed to get an impressive amount of orders.
![Three polish DMUs][polnisch]
Finally, another very interesting thing is the development in eastern europe. In particular, there was an awful lot of polish railcars, but Skoda also had to offer a new electric locomotive and a tram. Technically, they don’t seem to lag far behind german offerings, so it’ll be interesting to see where they go with this.
Written on September 28th, 2008 at 07:11 pm
