European Railroad Discussion > DB orders Talgo trainsets

DB orders up to 100 Talgo trainsets for intercity service:

https://www.railwaygazette.com/news/news/europe/single-view/view/db-orders-talgo-230-inter-city-trainsets.html

I'm pretty ignorant of European passenger rail, but it seemed to me like Talgo equipment wasn't used in Western Europe outside of Spain. If that is the case, a large DB order seems like a big change.

There was a Talgo sleeper train to Paris and one to Germany(Frankfurt IIRC).

SOO6617 Wrote:
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> There was a Talgo sleeper train to Paris and one
> to Germany(Frankfurt IIRC).

DB bought a few Talgo sets configured for overnight service in the late 1990s. Talgo built a maintenance facility for them at Berlin Warshcauer Straße that still exists to this day. The trainsets were originally intended for a Frankfurt - Barcelona service that never came to fruition and were instead used primarily on the inner-Germany routes Munich - Hamburg and Munich - Berlin. They were taken out of service (if I recall correctly) around 2008 after a short, not-even-10-year service life.

Otherwise, Talgo sets were used on the Geneva - Barcelona and Milan - Barcelona EuroNight services (which operated together and once had the dubious honor of being featured in the mainstream press when the section destined for Milan accidentally wound up in Geneva and vice versa). Then there were the Elipso Trenhotels that operated Paris - Barcelona and Paris - Madrid, both of which were cancelled with the opening of the France - Barcelona high-speed line. And there were a number of international daytime Talgo services between France and Spain operating to destinations such as Avignon.

Currently, there are two uses of Talgo equipment in Europe outside of the Iberian peninsula:

• Russian Railways operates the Moscow - Minsk - Warsaw - Berlin service with a Talgo set (in addition to their domestic deployment on the Moscow - Vladimir - Nizhny Novgorod route).
• In addition, there are a couple of Talgo sets in use on domestic services in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Those are the only current Talgo operations in Europe outside of the Iberian peninsula at present.

Thanks for all of that information. With that very minor history of service, and the early withdrawl, it is interesting the DB went for a big order.

inCHI Wrote:
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> Thanks for all of that information. With that very
> minor history of service, and the early withdrawl,
> it is interesting the DB went for a big order.

Well, they weren't removed from service due to any technical deficiency but for much more pragmatic reasons: the majority of the City Night Line network consisted of lots of through-car services, which were incompatible with Talgo, they being fixed trainsets. So the number of routes on which they could be operated was limited. Furthermore, I believe that they were due for a costly major overhaul, without which they could no longer be legally operated. 

But the primary problem is that the service for which they were conceived never materialized and no other dedicated deployment could be found for them. They were too exotic in that regard. That shouldn't be a problem for this new order, owing to its size and the relative rarity of through-cars on today's modern InterCity/EuroCity networks.

Talgo are to build a plant here in the UK, and to do some serious bidding for future high speed trains. chris uk

55002 Wrote:
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> Talgo are to build a plant here in the UK, and to
> do some serious bidding for future high speed
> trains. chris uk

I guess they must have a plan to deal with the UK’s high level platforms.  Tango USA didn’t bid on the original Acela deal because their trains were incompatible with high level platforms.

Dave