> Here is the new tram from CAF for Stockholm:

>

> http://www.caf.es/en/productos-servicios/proyectos/proyecto-detalle.php?p=53


Since this server is difficult to connect to (timeout), I arrogate
myself to perpetrate a shameless copyright violation. See attachments.

> Basically this is the same platform as what Bombardier is slowly

> developing for Melbourne, but this seemed to happen with a shorter

> gestation period and has beaten Bombardier to the finish.


Interestingly, Stockholm had lots of options for additional cars from
Bombardier that they didn't exercise. Apparently, the salescrooks at
Bombardier had counted on these options for their pricing...

> It's called the Urbos 3 model


The car for Stockholm is the Urbos AXL, the Urbos 3 is the 100% LF "two
rooms and bath"-design (delivered to e.g. Nantes) in its third
incarnation.

> but the model seems to come in two different platforms, this variant

> with small bogie rotation and another variant with conventional fixed

> bogies with suspended sections. No doubt designed with the aid of

> German engineers pushed out of the former "big three", as Wolfgang

> has described.


CAF recently had posted lots of employment ads for german speaking
staff, especially sales, commissioning, after sales, etc. because
they have now entered the german market (first order for streetcars
from Freiburg, and they're qualified as rolling stock supplier for DB)
For engineering (which is done in Spain), they seem to be pretty
autonomous, however. Right now, quite a few german engineers are busy
working for CNR Tangshan, among others.

> How the scene has changed in 3 or so years when I started to research

> the industry for Transit Australia. In 2008-2009 the "big three" in

> deliveries were Bombardier, Alstom and Siemens, dominant for at least

> a couple of decades.


For streetcars, Siemens had been essentially gone out of business since
the Combino disaster. And they haven't really recovered yet. They still
had some cars to deliver für Düsseldorf in 2011/2012, but new sales have
been in homeopathic doses. The first sale to Germany since the
Combino disaster, to Munich, was only possible due the abysmal failure
of Stadler.

> None of these had developed a 100% low floor car with rotating bogies

> but Alstom had developed a prototype, a variant of which it sold to

> Istanbul. Siemens went a different direction and adopted the

> MAN/Adtranz platform with a bogie under each section.


That's because after the Combino disaster they hired the original
designer of that car (Lutz Uebel) as "Senior Principal Engineer Urban
Transport" (or so).

Their latest bogie design for the Avenue (engineered and built by the
Graz site, not Lutz Uebels office) looks strange to me though.

And they still refuse to built (and actually test!) prototypes. In the
case of the Combino, if they had done it, they could have saved ~1 bio
EUR with an investment of just a few mio. They had a "concept
demonstrator", but that was used as a VIP toy for sales.

> Since then, Skoda produced the 15T Forcity, Alstom's model had a

> problem and spent more than a year locked in the depot of its first

> customer at Istanbul (maybe it's resolved in the new Ottawa tram) and

> Bombardier slowly developed a design derived from the Flexity Classic

> platform (like Adelaide's) for construction at Dandenong. Transtech

> in Helsinki developed a similar design which hasn't been built yet.


And Pesa and Vossloh and...

Most streetcar builders now offer two different designs:

- a 100% low-floor, mostly "two rooms and bath" configuration
- a "low entry" configuration with bogies, especially for tram-train
operation

They also try to standardise the running gear design between these two
types. Outboard longitudinal traction motors seem to have become the
standard configuration.

> Personally I think Melbourne should have gone with the Siemens Avenio

> when it was first shown to them, but I gather their experience with

> Siemens trains might have put them off.


Siemens (Europe) management is very successful in alienating honest
people that happen to get into contact with them.

On my first project in my first job (for an equipment supplier), I had
to draw up a tender for MBTA Boston. Siemens was one of the bidders, it
was their first project for "heavy rail" type rolling stock in the US,
and their tender was managed by their european headquarters, not their
US branch.

When the head of our US branch office (which was the only site in the
company delivering in time and making profits at that time because he
was an experienced, competent and honest manager for a change) came into
contact with the people from Siemens Europe, he almost instantly "hung
up the phone".

P.S.: Siemens got the contract (reckless dumping?), and the cars were
commissioned three years late.

When I came in contact with them again in a projetc later, I was
employed as an engineering consultant on the customer's side. We came to
their headquarters with three engineers for discussing our technical
requirements and they came with three contract managers (lawyers by
education) for fending off our technical requirements, but without a
single engineer. If had been up to me, I would have simply walked out
of the meeting room.

> They should have also put that extra low floor module in the Bs when

> Yarra Trams suggested it in 2003. If they'd done both they might have

> had a reasonable low floor fleet by now. Instead, now they're waiting

> and waiting and waiting for Bombardier when they could have had some

> Forcitys or CAFs in the meantime. Frustrating.


If they have a capable, well-equipped workshop at Melbourne, they could
have built the "plug in" low floor modules themselves. Numerous polish
operators have done this.

Sincerely,

Wolfgang