European Railroad Discussion > Sweden: MTR to Enter Stockholm Railroading

Honk Kong based MTR has etablated to Nordic railroading in the last two years. First the company took over handling some of Stockholm's local rail traffic (trams, local trains, tunnelbana) and now MTR is also getting well established between Stockholm and Göteborg (Gothenburg) "higher speed" traffic (as no true high speed traffic exists in Sweden for now). All that I'm looking at tells that MTR has built a very cost conscious and effective operations, something that competition may find hard to match if the service levels for MTR remain high. As an example I read a figure of the new FLIRT3 trains with operating costs just 0,8 euros / km! There is no way SJ could match this.

Before going forward, lets see some pics. I was spending my time at Stockholm's Central as the EMU from Göteborg was according to all signs 10 minutes late...when it all of the sudden appeared over the bridge 5 minutes early! So my apologies for poor setting on the pictures. 

   

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MTR will have six five module FLIRT3 trains for its use by August this year. We saw three units while visiting various places in Stockholm. These units can run 200 km/h / 125 mph but don't tilt so this will leave one edge in competition in SJ's favor. MTR will have 90 starts a week with its FLIRTs from August 15, offering a pretty good service between these two cities.

Other main routes for SJ and others are Stockholm - Malmö, which is rivalled by Snälltåget ("kind-hearted train" 8-) of Veolia / Transdev, headed in the picture below by ES64U2 Taurus of HectorRail. The same story here, it pulled well ahead of schedule to platform to block the view to MTR FLIRT and its close study. Other smaller long distance routes are Stockholm - Copenhagen and Stockholm - Oslo, solely handled by SJ (for long distance services). Oh yes, there is also Blue Train between Göteborg and Stockholm 4 times a week, starting from Göteborg, running to Stockholm and then to Uppsala for servicing and returning in the evening. 

SJ has annouced now that they will pull away partly from Gothenburg route, mowing some of its X2000s to Oslo route. So they are effectively saying they are not trying to compete with highly popular MTR and Blue Train services (which both always seem to be packed with travellers). 
 

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As you can tell, it was raining at the time, the weather in Nordic countries having been pretty awful this summer.

Here the FLIRT3 EMU, classified as X74 (how do they invent these numbers...?), pulls away to be serviced at Hagalund yard some minutes before another unit will be heading back to Gothenburg for a return journey. 

I have a theory of the X74 usage. As the train is pretty close to what Norwegians classified as their FLIRT2s =Bm74, maybe they wish to have this bridge available for the future? Or am I reaching too far in this thinking? Anyhow, where are the X73, X72 and X71? Swedish X50s are Bombardier Reginas, X60s Alstom Coradia Nordics, so why not start from the beginning with Stadler Rail EMU type classifying too? 

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Thanks for sharing...

You are welcome! It will be interesting to see the next phase in competition when not all the existing operators possibly run full trains. This phase will take some years from now. It is obvious from the moves of SJ and Blue Train that others are slightly on their toes because of the hugely powerful new competitor MTR.

Different from U.S. in (most) European Union countries is that public sector owns track and anyone can run on it, so setting a startup requires quite a bit less capital than it would require is you needed to build the track too. 

I love looking at shiny new intercity trains.  We seldom have the opportunity in the States.

And, these trains are RED, it looks like many high(er) speed trains all over Europe are red/reddish 8-D 

Might be that customers are attracted by this color? Or maybe they are simply more visible?

Won't you soon be running in U.S. some diesel powered Siemens California built higher speed trains? I can't wait to see those online and catch a few pictures of them...

Latebeans Wrote:
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> I love looking at shiny new intercity trains. 
> We seldom have the opportunity in the States.

Below some "Red Arrows" and other deep red high speed trains.

1) Frecciarossa means literally "red arrow" and is the current Trenitalia highest speed (they run 340 km/h / 211 mph for newer sets. Some technical problems (surprise, surprise,...) have been reported so for the moment I'm unaware what the real production speed is). Here is the newest AnsaldoBreda-Bombardier train to Trenitalia fleet.

2) Traditional high speed for Italia, in new red colors. This ETR-500 formation runs fast, but is very sluggish (power to weight ratio is low). Picture by Gerry.

3) NTV bright red and mean lookin offering to Italian high speed competition. This is an Alstom AGV EMU, based on some new but expensive technologies and some components you also find in TGVs.

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4) Definitely most Siemens Railjets are red too...   picture by Pekka and Merja.

5) Some red is used even on the largest fleet of Pendolinos, in U.K. Picture by Stas.

6) Thalys TGVs are traditionally RED. Here a Thalys PBKA in Köln, Germany. Picture by Ilkka.

Can you find any other use of red + high speed?

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> So my apologies for poor setting on the pictures.  

No apologies needed.  Your pics are excellent!   For those of us here in the United States, we appreciate any pics with the rail equipment as well as the surrounding landscape.  You're our "eyes" into Railfanning in Sweden.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 07/18/15 09:22 by octrax.

Thank you for the kind words on pictures! Next time I will be 20 minutes before the arrival in the proper place to catch the train in time ;)

There will be many more subjects on Sweden once I get pictures processed. So many things happening there all the time worthy of reporting and hopefully interesting to many on this forum..