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Description

Danish State Railways IC4 type train racing through Ørestad, taken during a tour through Scandinavia back in 2016.

Like with pretty much everything that AnsaldoBreda builds, be it trams or high-speed trains, these DMUs were heavily delayed by several years and suffered from a number of technical problems once they did finally enter service. Here are some quotations from the Wikipedia page:

In September 2014 an investigation by the Danish Department of Transport was launched to find whether it was more economical to have the delivered trains scrapped or have them rebuilt for slower regional traffic. Scrapping the trains could lead to DSB filing for bankruptcy. It was announced on 15 December 2016 that the troubled fleet would be phased out from 2024.

Interestingly, all the failings of the IC4 prolonged the life of an already retired German train type, namely the ICE TD, several units of which were rented from DB. I even managed to catch some of those in DSB livery shortly before being scrapped some time ago. Never realized that connection until I came across this photo in my archive and decided to look up what train this even is.

Interestingly, the train of the Copenhagen Metro visible in the background is also a product of AnsaldoBreda, and surprisingly, those actually seem to work normally!

Fun fact: A manchild called Berlusconi gifted one of these trains (which the Italian government didn't actually own, it was destined for the DSB) to Libyan dictator Gaddafi as a huge bribe to secure railway and motorway building contracts for Italian companies. However, there was no railway in the entire country, so they had to lay a few kilometers of track just to be able to run the 4-car unit back and forth somewhat. It survived the Libyan Revolution in 2011 but has since then been left stranded and unused where it was. As this article nicely puts it, the people of Libya definitely dodged a bullet there. Had they actually built a railway and bought AnsaldoBreda rolling stock, I'm sure this mode of transportation would not have been off to a good start in that country. Though not having any railway network is probably not the best alternative.

Description

Danish State Railways IC4 type train racing through Ørestad, taken during a tour through Scandinavia back in 2016.

Like with pretty much everything that AnsaldoBreda builds, be it trams or high-speed trains, these DMUs were heavily delayed by several years and suffered from a number of technical problems once they did finally enter service. Here are some quotations from the Wikipedia page:

In September 2014 an investigation by the Danish Department of Transport was launched to find whether it was more economical to have the delivered trains scrapped or have them rebuilt for slower regional traffic. Scrapping the trains could lead to DSB filing for bankruptcy. It was announced on 15 December 2016 that the troubled fleet would be phased out from 2024.

Interestingly, all the failings of the IC4 prolonged the life of an already retired German train type, namely the ICE TD, several units of which were rented from DB. I even managed to catch some of those in DSB livery shortly before being scrapped some time ago. Never realized that connection until I came across this photo in my archive and decided to look up what train this even is.

Interestingly, the train of the Copenhagen Metro visible in the background is also a product of AnsaldoBreda, and surprisingly, those actually seem to work normally!

Fun fact: A manchild called Berlusconi gifted one of these trains (which the Italian government didn't actually own, it was destined for the DSB) to Libyan dictator Gaddafi as a huge bribe to secure railway and motorway building contracts for Italian companies. However, there was no railway in the entire country, so they had to lay a few kilometers of track just to be able to run the 4-car unit back and forth somewhat. It survived the Libyan Revolution in 2011 but has since then been left stranded and unused where it was. As this article nicely puts it, the people of Libya definitely dodged a bullet there. Had they actually built a railway and bought AnsaldoBreda rolling stock, I'm sure this mode of transportation would not have been off to a good start in that country. Though not having any railway network is probably not the best alternative.