U3 railcar

U3 railcar (or U3 series) is the name for a family of high-floor light rail vehicles .

Siemens Duewag U3
Siemens Duewag U3
Number:	27
Manufacturer:	DUEWAG , Wegmann , Siemens
Year of construction (s):	1980
Retirement:	2017
Axis formula :	B'2'B
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Length:	24.49 m
Width:	2.65 m
Installed capacity:	2 × 174 kW
Power system :	600 V DC
Number of traction motors:	2
Coupling type:	Scharfenberg
Seats:	64
Standing room:	182
Floor height:	97 cm

General

U3 car on the U4 line in Frankfurt

Passenger compartment

The series was developed from 1977 by the Düwag company for use on the Frankfurt am Main subway . A second, much larger series was to be ordered in 1986 for operation on the C route , but this plan was not implemented for cost reasons.

The U3 car bodies are made entirely of steel. The car body is made in two parts, with a joint in the middle of the vehicle. All U3 cars were built as bidirectional vehicles and have Scharfenberg couplings on both sides . There are train sets of up to four vehicles possible.

The type U3 was first delivered in 1980 in a total of 27 copies to Frankfurt, where they were given the numbers 451 to 477. 476 and 477 were equipped for driverless operation. As a result, they were not approved for public transport and were driven automatically at night for test purposes. After about a month, the vehicles were restored to their normal condition and were ready for public transport again.

The vehicles have an entry / floor height of 97 cm and are designed for 87 cm high platforms . You have a completely flat floor. Steps at the entrances, as they are in type U2, were not installed. This made it possible to distribute the doors more evenly over the length of the vehicle, since the omitted steps meant that the bogies did not have to be taken into account when placing the entrances .

Initially, the vehicles were fitted with red leather seats, which were replaced by blue fabric seats in VGF design at the end of the 1990s. The museum cars received the original seats.

The Salzburger Stadtwerke ordered largely identical vehicles under the designation ET 40/50 between 1983 and 2002 for their S-Bahn lines Salzburg – Lamprechtshausen (S1) and Bürmoos – Ostermiething (S11).

Conversions

As with the U2e cars , the center bar has been removed from a pair of doors in each car to provide barrier-free entry.

Color schemes

U3 railcar 469 at the Seckbacher Landstrasse station

Initially, the vehicles were delivered in orange / ivory. Since the mid-1990s, it has been repainted in the new VGF house color, subaru vista blue .

commitment

The vehicles ran on the U4 line until 2015. Because of the maximum length of the station of 105 meters, up to four vehicles can run in multiple traction in Frankfurt . The vehicles have been running on the U6 since the beginning of April 2015; the U5 cars that previously operated there were transferred to the U4 line. In the period from August 27, 2016 to October 10, 2016, only U5 wagons operated on the U6 line until the construction work on the U5 line was completed and the wagons were needed there again. In the spring of 2017, a sufficient number of new type U5 cars were available to finally replace all type U3 vehicles on the U6 line. The U3 cars ended in 2017. Its further use is still unknown, but for the time being the majority of the vehicles will be kept as an iron reserve. The vehicles 451, 452 and 453 are currently being returned to their original state as future museum vehicles. The official farewell trip took place on October 13, 2018.

Use abroad

After being taken out of service and after a long period of storage, the remaining railcars (apart from the museum cars 451, 452 and 453) were sold to Monterrey, Mexico, in 2019. They are to be used on the local tram from the end of 2020. Before that, they will be modernized at Talbot Services , so that they should be operational for at least another 20 years. In addition to renewing the electrics and drive technology, video surveillance and a new passenger information system will be installed in the interior. The trains will also be equipped with the ETCS train control system.

Web links

Commons : Siemens-Duewag U3  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ VGF press release of August 26, 2016: Line U6: From Saturday (for the time being) barrier-free ( memento of the original from September 23, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ tram-info car park list Frankfurt / Main. Retrieved March 30, 2018 . 
3. ^ Monterrey to get refurbished Frankfurt light metro trains. In: International Railway Journal. October 14, 2019, accessed October 16, 2019 .