The first procurement was redone, as the only bid came from Talgo/Siemens, with Siemens providing the locomotives (likely Vectrons).
It's unclear if Siemens is still involved in Talgo’s bid in the second procurement. If that is the case, they would at least avoid having to deal with Talgo locos.
I hope Talgo has some trick up its sleeve with this order 🤞
The ones they made for Kazakhstan are really poor. And the 20-year-old ones they made for Russia are no longer in service (despite the Siemens carriages from the same time still running). Hopefully I’ll be surprised like the DSB Talgos 😅
Looks like Talgo has won the tender to build new night trains for Stockholm–Luleå/Narvik
Best of luck to Sweden 💀 The new DK + DE Talgos are working very reliably. KZ was so happy with their Talgos that they kicked them out and replaced the factory with Stadler
www.sverigesradio.se/artikel/klar...
It's too hot and humid there 🤣
THSR 700T Train
TR Class E200 Train
TR EMU3000 Train
TR PP E1000 Train
So long Taiwan, it’s been a blast 🇹🇼
If not my favourite place in Asia, it’s definitely a strong contender.
Now for a ride up the high speed line to Taipei before heading to the airport for my flight back to Europe
Time to get back home and into editing mode, gotta get that FlixBus video moving 👀
The stations have a bit of wire, so I think they charge while picking up passengers.
Kaohsiung 🇹🇼 really said let’s run our brand new light rail straight through the old station. Which is now an open-air museum and one of the nicest places to just hang out in the city 😍🚋
Not many days left for these almost 50 year old American built E200 series locomotives
Train 708 from Taitung to Kaohsiung / Xinzuoying is still a safe bet for now, but who knows when that too will quietly turn into a brand new Toshiba E500 👀
The carriages have various tech issues, combined with a lack of staff training resources due to DSB introducing a new staff scheduling program that isn’t working very well yet. Reducing the amount of staff available for training.
I don't know more about the specific faults on the carriages
That's at least some good news.
Hopefully they can get them working reliably (and enough staff trained) to cover all the diagrams by summer. It's around 4 diagrams IIRC with Talgos a day, so still some way to go!
I’m worried it’ll be another shitshow summer for the route.
Sadly the Talgo's (and therefore the whole route) is still extremely unreliable. Its a shame, the carriages themselves are OK and would bring much needed capacity
In reality they can barely get 1 rake running a day, so IC3, IC1 or even Dosto to Padborg, then bus, have become a daily occurrence :(
Have never seen this many bikes on a long-distance train before 😅🚲
Every possible space they could be stored in was full of them, must’ve been at least 30 on this EMU3000!
Anyway, rough day on the Taiwan railway network, my Taipei–Taitung train went from first Unknown, to eventually 40 min late 😬
It’s a mix of both.
From what I understand, the training issues are largely tied to the new faulty IVU planning system, which has stretched staffing just to cover basic operations leaving little time for training.
But the Talgos still have many faults during day to day ops. Worse than IC4 atm.
2+3 It's fine given the trains are wider than your typical European on.
Much love to the sensible high-speed rail systems out there that let you stand when the trains are busy ❤️
Otherwise it would be a 90-minute wait, the kind of nonsense you get with operators that don’t allow standing passengers 🙄
Not exactly what you want after a long-haul flight is to wait more.
Update Hamburg seemed too boring, so went to Taiwan instead 🇹🇼
Talgo to Hamburg looking a bit different this morning 😬
The Talgo carriages are still an operational disaster almost six months after entering service and after being delivered two years late 🙄
The power of hindsight, we probably could have had a stable Comfort/RailJet variant running by now. 😕
A few: LT -> PL | CZ -> DE | CH -> FR
Think of a long haul economy flight… and then times it by 4 😅
Just very sore, especially in my back, bum and feet (surprisingly) And then add 4 days of not necessarily less hours of sleep, just in small intervals of poor quality 😴
Looks are deceiving I guess 🤣
Gonna take a while to make! So much footage to look through 😭😝
By FlixBus ofc 😝
Flying direct to Copenhagen in a few days ✈️😃
5500+ km and 107 hours later, welcome to Lisbon 🇵🇹🚌
6 minutes ahead of schedule too!
Not much else to say really, off to the hotel 💤
I didn’t, it wasn’t offered. I think it might be a bug caused by the Zurich to Lisbon leg not having assigned seating at all.
I could reserve seats on the other segments though, just not an empty one next to me.
Quick rest stop right on the Spanish–Portuguese border 🇪🇸🇵🇹
Ultimately I’m only doing this because my inner masochist and content creator thought it was a powerful combo 😂
There’s a Lisbon–Lviv bus resting here, which actually is a reasonable way to reach Ukraine given the current situation. Ouch
Funny enough the first time I tried flix was in Croatia and the bus simply didn't show up 😅 Better luck on this trip in that regard :D
Hotels booked, hopefully the bed is comfy 😴
2/2
The first 3 buses were run by dedicated flix subsidiaries with 2-person crews swapping every 8–10 hours.
The Lisbon route, however, seems fully subcontracted out both bus and staff wise simply running under the Flix brand, also 3-person crews not swapping throughout.
1/2 All the FlixBuses I saw in Finland were Flix-branded and operated by Flix Estonia on Estonian plates (there were 4 parked at Helsinki Harbour).
There doesn’t seem to be much consistency in how Flix operates across countries. It seem to vary a lot by route and country.
Morning from the “International Connection Point” near Palencia 🇪🇸
A big hub-and-spoke operation runs here, with buses from all over Europe meeting before heading off to other parts of the Iberian Peninsula.
My bus is now going to Porto? So we’ve now been moved onto a different bus for Lisbon.
