Today, May 31st 2011, Swiss Federal Railways Chairman, Andreas Meyer announced that effective with the December 2011 timetable change all EuroCity services within Switzerland that are currently operated with Alstom ETR 470 and ETR 610 Pendolinos, would only use SBB owned and maintained trainsets. Unfortunately this means that through service to Venezia will end, and all trains will terminate at Milano. Also announced was that SBB would withdraw all ETR 470 Pendolinos at the earliest opportunity, but that won’t be until December 2014. These changes are likely due to a recent electrical fire suffered by a Trenitalia owned ETR 470 while operating a service over the Gotthard Route.
Is there a history of similar electrical fires with the Alstom ETR 470 and ETR 610 Pendolinos ? What has tpyically caught fire - motor, transformer, lighting fixtures, toaster ? Or is this an overreaction, or protecting the ‘home guard’ equipment, etc. ?
Is this the result of an inherent manufacturing defect, or an operations & maintenance problem ? How will Alstom feel about that apparent ‘slam’ at the quality of their equipment ? Would a rewiring or upgrade program of some kind cure it ? Would Trenitalia be motivated to or insist on that to restore their equipment to full functionality ?
Lot of questions here, and some are likely unknowable and unanswerable right know, I concede - but it is an unusual and provocative situation.
(It took me a while to get that well-disguised humor . . . [:-^] Me too !
The Alstom Pendolino trains proposed for the Polish HSR Contract in the above link, are these the same product, or one, very similar to the ones that the SBB is wanting to embargo? Or is it a problem with the Non-SBB Operations?
Excuse me, Beaulieu, but I read the German article and saw nothing about any fire. The whole theme was that they were improving service for their customers and shortening travel time in all directions. Perhaps your German is better than mine.
Maybe I am just missing the humor that everyone is talking about.
The fire happened on Trenitalia owned set ETR 470 007 which was operating on EuroCity 12 from Milano Centrale to Zürich Hauptbahnhof on May 19th, 2011. The fire was noticed coming out from the electrical compartment under one of the First Class cars at Ambri-Piotta station which is near the top of the northbound Gotthard climb. Before they got the fire out that car was gutted and the adjacent car suffered serious damage. I would expect the set would be written off.
Most of the improvements talked about in the linked story concern improved service to French destinations due to the completion of the Rhin - Rhône LGV which will cut travel times via Basel.
To give you some background on the situation, SBB and Trenitalia incorporated a joint venture named Cisalpino AG to operate all passenger service between the two countries. To operate these trains Cisalpino bought 9 ETR470 Pendolinos. There have been constant problems with these trains, to make matters worse Trenitalia was responsible for maintenance of these sets at a facility in Milano. The sets were coming back from Italy without the garbage being emptied, toilets not working, and with graffiti on the outside. Finally the Swiss Government delivered an ultimatum, either Cisalpino surrender its operating license in Switzerland voluntarily, or the Government would take it away. The difference being that if they agreed to surrender it, they would have a short grace period to make other arrangements to operate the services. With Cisalpino gone, the next problems to crop up was that the new ETR 610 Pendolinos came from Alstom late and overweight. The over weight issue means that they have no power reserve climbing the Gotthard and they have to operate at full throttle from the time they leave Arth-Goldau station until they reach the top, and if a unit is putting out slightly less than full rated power they can’t keep to the schedule (the Swiss are very serious about timekeeping). It doesn’t help matters that Mauro Moretti, the CEO o
Sam, the Pendolinos for Poland are at least a generation newer than the Swiss-Italian ones being withdrawn. Part of the problem is the Italian indifference towards maintenance, part due to the Swiss having high standards, and part due to the demanding service they are being used with the steep grades in the Swiss Alps.
As I read both articles, it appears that part of the problem is stated as the high mileage (4.2 mil km), part the fact the Swiss have only four trainsets since Cisalpino was dissolved, and part the high maintenance required for these old trainsets.
Thanks for the extra link, Beaulieu. I agree with Schlimm, and I also enjoyed the video of the fire and the comments of the SBB folks. I would recommend that everyone see that link, even if you don’t know the language. The train videos are worth seeing.
And the German as spoken by the Swiss is much different than the Bavarian I am used to.
SBB acquired four of the joint-venture sets (Cisalpino ETR470) and in doing so also the maintenance. Result: since SBB does the maintenance the downtimes of those sets is half of what it used to be.
The ETR470 are nearing a major overhaul point at 4.2 million kilometers, as a stop gap measure SBB invests an additional 12 million SFr to keep their four sets in service until 2014, at which point they will be taken out of service.
Apart from using the ETR470 there will be some locomotive hauled trains with conventional rolling stock to supplement the ETR470s.
Since the direct connection to Venice can’t be maintained - not enough SBB sets for that - the trains will terminate at Milan, with FS connections for Venice.
The Italians decided that their ETR610 sets will be restricted to their own network. Due to that, SBB is covering the connections through the Simplon with their own ETR610 (move them from the Gotthard route). Scheduling remains the same.
I sort of suspected that the PKP units might be an improved version of the older Pendolinos. The problem being that sometimes “new and improvd can be a relative term in some cases.”
Having never been to Switzerland, I can only relate the railway operations to what I have read and seen in videos.
Anyway, I just wanted to echo Paul’s thoughts, and thanks as well.
