The International Simutrans Forum

Community => Community Discussion => Randomness Lounge => Topic started by: Ters on August 24, 2012, 05:00:31 PM

Title: Age of rolling stock
Post by: Ters on August 24, 2012, 05:00:31 PM
There was some discussion about the age of rolling stock in another thread, and for some reason I felt the urge to present the rolling stock of Norway to see how it compares with other European countries. Years are from Wikipedia, while the situation reports are based on casual observations, plus rumours and reports from a rail-related Norwegian forum. NSB was the name of the state owned monopoly on almost anything railroad related. It has been broken up into infrastructure, passenger and freight, with the passenger bit keeping the name. The state still owns the former two, while the freight part became a private company, though it is now owned fully by NSB again. The airport express also became a separate company, but fully state owned. There are several freight companies, most of them Swedish, even the one (until recently two) ultimately owned by Norwegians.

Disclaimer: Descriptions might be a bit wrong or biased since it's gathered from unofficial sources on the Internet.The skipped numbers are foreign locomotives that have made a guest appearance, plus a locomotive used on a mining company's own isolated rail line.Three generations of passenger carriges are in use. B5 and B7 have been, or are being, refurbished recently. Not sure about B3. There's also a series of sleeping carriage that I haven't been able to find dates for, but I thinks it's the newest type of passenger carriage.The older stuff seems to have a reputation of being more reliable, which also seems to be that case with pretty much everything from refridgerators to phones. How's the situation in other countries? Is the rolling stock more or less youthful?
Title: Re: Age of rolling stock
Post by: prissi on August 24, 2012, 09:04:49 PM
In germany it really depends. Most mainly engines for passengers saw lots of use, like the legendary Br103, which holds the german all time record of an average speed of 67 km/h over 31 days! (Mind you, the engines had to reverse at the end of a journey, and their maximum speed was limited to 160 km/h due to tracks not finished yet.) The whole fleet run 58 km/h per day! No wonder these engines did not survived more than 30 years of service.

All successor are newer. Br120 was never built in big numbers, and the more recent ones like 101, 145, and derived has been built just until recently.

There are some engines, which were delivered just before and after reunification and some older ones. But most of the electric engines is younger than 30 years. Most of the cars have be modernized in the 90ies, since many compartment cars were converted to inter region and Großraumwagen (open seating cars?).

For freight, privatisation really took off. I live close to berlin largest harbour, and on the railyrad (even it does not have overhead wires) I see many different engines, swiss retired electric Re4/6, the strongest diesel ever built in germany, even a british diesel (which unknown liverey) was there. Thus anything built in the last 50 years might be seen, especially for heavy diesel.

But to conclude, most of the rolling stock is younger than 30 years in germany.
Title: Re: Age of rolling stock
Post by: jamespetts on August 24, 2012, 10:40:15 PM
Hmm - the oldest rolling stock in regular service in the UK is presently on the Isle of Wight, where former London Underground trains built in around 1938 run on island's only remaining railway line. Underground stock is used because of the limited clearance in the railway's tunnels.

On the mainland, until recently, the oldest stock in regular revenue earning service was the "A" stock on the London Underground's Metropolitan line, running between the city of London and the North Western suburbs of Amersham, Watford and Uxbridge. This is now being replaced by "S" stock from 2011 onwards; I am not sure whether there are still a few trains of "A" stock left, but, if there are, they only have a few months left.

Aside from the Underground, the oldest regular service vehicles are the HSTs and class 315 EMUs from the mid 1970s. It is worthy of note that the diesel engines themselves in the HSTs were replaced in the mid 2000s with modern units to extend their life (the life expiry of the engines themselves I know was mentioned in the other thread).
Title: Re: Age of rolling stock
Post by: ӔO on August 25, 2012, 04:55:35 AM
For US and Canada, we use whatever is still useable. GP7/9 are still in service, but they are typically limited to yard duty.
I think most of the freight cars are around 20 to 30 years old. Passenger cars seem varied. The design is the same, but I know there's at least a decade or three between bombardier bilevel coaches. It is also very difficult distinguishing amfleet coaches.

If there is anything I've noticed, the diesels get all the attention, whilst everything attached to it has very scarce info.