HOME | DD

Description
Come on, has nobody else posted any pictures from Innotrans '014 yet? I know back in 2012, I was just one of three or four DAers in Berlin, but apparently this year, last weekend, I held up our flag (metaphorically speaking) on my own. Which is odd, given that this trade fair grows in size every time it happens. This year, it was so big that most trams actually had to bring their own tracks because all the regular tracks were used already.

For those of you who weren't around in 2012, Innotrans is a big rail exhibition in Berlin, taking place every two years in late september. It has two parts: The main business part, which runs during the week, has really expensive tickets, and is mainly aimed at people in the rail business. And then, after this part closes, there are the public days, where tickets cost €2,50 (which is a price increase actually; they used to be just €2 back in 2010). During these days, the halls are closed; only the outside area is open. The outside area, though, is the place where all the newest trains from all over Europe are put on display, so really it's the most interesting part.

Probably the star this year, as in the fastest high speed train, was this, the ETR 1000 for italian company Trenitalia. It is part of Bombardier's Zefiro family of high speed trains which has so far mostly sold in China. This version is built in cooperation with italian company AnsaldoBreda, which has a somewhat abysmal track record with new trains for the past decade or so, but they don't have a lot of input on this one.

The train will run in Italy starting next year, with a top speed of 300 km/h which can later be raised to 360. Bombardier publicly advertises the number 400 km/h (that's 250 mph for our american friends), as in "there's no reason why the train couldn't reach that", but Trenitalia has no intentions of actually going there. I like the very stylish design.

Description
Come on, has nobody else posted any pictures from Innotrans '014 yet? I know back in 2012, I was just one of three or four DAers in Berlin, but apparently this year, last weekend, I held up our flag (metaphorically speaking) on my own. Which is odd, given that this trade fair grows in size every time it happens. This year, it was so big that most trams actually had to bring their own tracks because all the regular tracks were used already.

For those of you who weren't around in 2012, Innotrans is a big rail exhibition in Berlin, taking place every two years in late september. It has two parts: The main business part, which runs during the week, has really expensive tickets, and is mainly aimed at people in the rail business. And then, after this part closes, there are the public days, where tickets cost €2,50 (which is a price increase actually; they used to be just €2 back in 2010). During these days, the halls are closed; only the outside area is open. The outside area, though, is the place where all the newest trains from all over Europe are put on display, so really it's the most interesting part.

Probably the star this year, as in the fastest high speed train, was this, the ETR 1000 for italian company Trenitalia. It is part of Bombardier's Zefiro family of high speed trains which has so far mostly sold in China. This version is built in cooperation with italian company AnsaldoBreda, which has a somewhat abysmal track record with new trains for the past decade or so, but they don't have a lot of input on this one.

The train will run in Italy starting next year, with a top speed of 300 km/h which can later be raised to 360. Bombardier publicly advertises the number 400 km/h (that's 250 mph for our american friends), as in "there's no reason why the train couldn't reach that", but Trenitalia has no intentions of actually going there. I like the very stylish design.