European Railroad Discussion > Austria: Battery and Diesel Supported Railjet

On the basic European Railroading the next subjects is Railjet of ÖBB, favorite for many railfans. ÖBB long distance + high speed traffic (of up to 230 km/h / 143 mph) is organized to its own business unit and latter owns virtual EMU units called Railjets. These are neatly reddish trains all modules built by Siemens. Attached to each Railjet is one Austrian class 1116 (ES64U2) or 1216 (ES64U4) locomotive with 6,4 MWs of power, quite enough for the use. Behind, in front of it or at both ends are 6 Viaggio Classic type coaches and a driving trailer. Between first and second class coaches there is also a restaurant/buffet car. For ÖBB there are 60 Railjets either in use or under construction.

Raijets run internationally in addition to their Austrian internal routes. Routes span to Germany, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Hungary and soon Italy. Looks like ceritification of West European standard rolling stock in Italy has by now taken around 10 years, but is now presumed to be ready next year for these trains. ÖBB on its sales portal declines to comment when routes to Italy via Railjet will be available. 

To everyone's surprise Friends of mine managed to find and unusual diesel and battery powered Railjet #48 at Innsbruck while waiting for the connecting train. Let's see sdome pictures of it!
 

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Next on line in this fashionable Railjet...

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And finally the "Mozart" ES64U2 puching the coaches. 

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Where do you see the diesel/battery Railjet??  :-/

Well, can you see the diesel? It is there... ;) 

For the Battery it looks like it is actually Red Bull instead 8-D


chs7-321 Wrote:
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> Where do you see the diesel/battery Railjet?? 
> :-/

The beauty of EMUs works with virtual EMUs too: with capacity addition needed, you just plugin another train to the front or rear. Which makes the Taurus (ES64U2) look funny in the middle of the train... yet, these kind of configurations are common at least in Austria, Switzerland, Sweden and Finland. 

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McKey Wrote:
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> The beauty of EMUs works with virtual EMUs too:
> with capacity addition needed, you just plugin
> another train to the front or rear.

But that "beauty" is in the eye of the operator and his accountants:  The inflexibility of the fixed consist trainset can be a negative as well if the incremental demand equals less than a full trainset.  No doubt the "modern" operators simply demand price the service to encourage the incrementals to take a different train or, more likely, a different mode:  The profit center now comes ahead of the traveling public -- but then ÖBB, DB, et al used to be organizations for the good of the nation.

And to take some examples from an earlier generation of ÖBB emu that bore a quite distinct similarity to the Railjet, the 4010 "Transalpin" type sets:
-  ÖBB found that running two sets in multiple had one big disadvantage:  The labor costs of two separate restaurant facilities.
-  ÖBB also resorted to running an additional coach or two coupled behind the 4010 set;  of course these passengers did not have access to the food service, etc

Hence, in Austria the pendulum swung back to locomotive hauled trains;  perhaps we'll see that happen again.

SZ

The restaurant issue sounds interesting...so much for the disadvantage of the operator (keeping both open) or the customer (closing one and keeping one open). Definitely truly modular trains have advantage here!

For some reason, as far as I know, none of the high speed trains are truly modular, or are there any? 230 km/h / 143 mph here is withing the lower limits of "high speed", but still.

Here is a picture of restocking the older way the older class Wrmz ÖBB buffet car.
 

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I was never too crazy about having advertisements on the sides of passenger cars but these really look nice!

Andy

I still don't see a diesel in any of the pictures...  :-/

It is the third picture in the second set 8-D ...Railjet supported by Diesel.

chs7-321 Wrote:
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> I still don't see a diesel in any of the
> pictures...  :-/

Ooooooh, right, lol.

I wasn't really paying attention to the specifics of the advertisement......haha

McKey Wrote:
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> It is the third picture in the second set 8-D
> ...Railjet supported by Diesel.
>
> chs7-321 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I still don't see a diesel in any of the
> > pictures...  :-/

It's worth it to watch the various visoe of the Railjet Es 64 U motors. The start up tune is amazing.

GettingShort Wrote:
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> It's worth it to watch the various visoe of the
> Railjet Es 64 U motors. The start up tune is
> amazing.

And it's even better to stand next to them when they are doing same....  :)

Ain't these called Mozarts? The tunes are truly amazing. Anyone got a video of Austrian class 1116 starting? 

McKey Wrote:
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> The tunes are truly
> amazing. Anyone got a video of Austrian class 1116
> starting? 

Look here: http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?17,3489904,3491451#msg-3491451

The Taurus start-up sequence starts at appr. 0:25 seconds into the video

E111

That is it!