European Railroad Discussion > Innotrans: Bombardier Regio 2N

Here comes a thread of Bombardier Region 2N for France. No, it is _not_ Alstom, it is in fact from the current heavy weight player there too, Bombardier. I think Bombardier simply took over some train manufacturing plants transforming these to profitable production again, quite an achievement in trade unions plagued France.

Flashy painting here obscured somewhat the innovations this _multiple_unit_ in the word's true meaning has to offer.

First of all, Regio 2N clearly comes out of the drawing board of a true professional team. Besides of having high quality standard design it has surprisingly many innovations, the most important which is the design on passenger flows between the double decked seating modules and single story access and service modules. With these it is easy to create a train of any length needed. The wide double access doors between the seating modules allow unobstructed _fast_ flow of passengers to and from the platforms at European Union standard low floor level. No steps need to be taken. Pushing in and out baby carts and bikes is easy too. There are a few seats nearby the doors so elderly and slowly moving citizens don't need to climb up or down the adjacent coach steps, again design feature well thought.

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Next set of pics...

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Some more modular well thought design...

Here you see just two kinds of modules: service modules and traveling modules, in multiple!

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Outwardly the design takes a bit further some of the solutions Bombardier's customers have found useful and rugged enough in hard use. For example looking at the hood of the train, while this looks nicely designed, it also follows in the footsteps of Francilien EMUs for Paris as well as some other recent Bombardier EMUs.

Since we have now looked inside lets take the slope inside the low floored EMU. Hre awaits probably the biggest surprise: the extremely flashy exterior gives away here to the almost barest inside. Gone are the cool LED effects the Franciliens were playing with. Look for yourself at the pictures!

At each service module a standard, quite high tech and almost huge bathroom module is installed. Besides for serving ordinary travellers, this is also meant to be used with wheelchairs. Judging from what it looks like it really looks like this could be done. While we have seen this kind of bathrooms for 20 years in office and public buildings, this is still rare in today's trains, occupying lots of space. But since the EU regulations dictate that every train needs to have one, it can be found on this regional set too.

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A few more inside views.

Many more pictures can be found at: http://www.4rail.net/art_innotrans2014_main.php

To me this EMU seemed somehow the Innovation star for its class at Innotrans 2014. What do you think?

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A baggie , really . Hope theres some kind of cover and thats just to show the connectors. If not The first train with a clown nose. . chuckle chuckle

Beautiful and Functional train set. WE could do this and better here in the US if we wanted to.

An interesting mixture of the functional, the attractive and the frightful. The interiors look nice enough but also look like they are going to appear soiled very quickly. The exterior on the other hand is frightful, overly busy livery combined with car tops covered with the cars I suppose, AC systems and propulsion related machinery. It just looks cheap and unfinished, almost like one of those cutaway steam engines in museums. Sorry it looks lie a huge step backwards and more like something that would be foisted off on commuters in this country. Except for the interior, US equipment usually has all the charm of the intake lobby of a county jail drunk tank.
Or. Maybe I'm just in a very cranky frame of mind today.

I know the crapper has to be wheelchair accessible but you could almost sell it to a rider as a private room

cheap plastic

Looks like we all are critical to some aspects of this high volume train!

For comparison, here are some pictures from the previous generation SNCF class 50'000 "Francilien" (Regio 2N is class 55'500) in use. This was one of the starts of Innotrans 2012. Many more pictures can be found here: http://www.4rail.net/reference_france_gallery2.php#stif_z50000

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McKey Wrote:
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> Looks like we all are critical to some aspects of
> this high volume train!
>
> For comparison, here are some pictures from the
> previous generation SNCF class 50'000 "Francilien"
> (Regio 2N is class 55'500) in use. This was one of
> the starts of Innotrans 2012. Many more pictures
> can be found here:
> http://www.4rail.net/reference_france_gallery2.php
> #stif_z50000

Thats the key word High column. It corporate code for stuff em in with the least amount of comfort they will put up with . If I sat in those seats for half an hour i would be sore from my as send up to my neck Planes are far worse though unless you can afford a $1500 dollar business class ticket. Flew to SFO from NY the fair was $175 plus $75 for an inch more leg room , the business class was $1600 bucks. Take the train you can almost get a roomette for 3 days but its the 3 days nobody want to deal with.

Yeap, however, this is just a regional train for distances no more than three hours so it should be pretty much OK, before the materials wear out. David Haydock from Platform 5 / Today's Railways has written that French these days are no more cleaning and maintaining too much the interiors of their trains (SNCF and STIF (of Paris) are not doing that) so the results are not too good for passenger comfort.

I think it is up to the operator, what the interiors look like. If you order cheapest possible materials, as has obviously been the case here, you get the very cheapest solutions. Often the difference between proper and the cheapest materials might be marginal.