Rail Photo of the Month: December 2019

CAF 8000 Series 8007

CAF 8000 Series 8007

Location: Mar de Cristal, Madrid, Spain
Operator of Vehicle: Metro de Madrid
Date of Photo: June 10, 2008

Mrs. Oren’s Transit Page is soon heading off to Spain for vacation, leaving me all alone at home to continue going through my seemingly never ending photo queue and other website related projects. 

(OK OK, I’ll miss her.)  

However, it seemed like a fitting occasion to share a photo of my favorite Madrid Metro car class, and the car class most likely to greet her upon arrival at the Madrid Airport.  The 8000 Series cars debuted on Line 8, which connects the airport to Nuevos Ministerios.  I really like their sleek exterior design, and if memory serves correctly, they had a great railfan window behind the full width cab when I was first in Madrid in 2005 (I believe this was no longer the case in by 2008).  These trains feature open gangways and provide a smooth ride while reaching speeds in excess of 62 MPH (100 KPH) at several points on their journeys to and from the airport.  In addition to operating on Line 8, these trains can also be found on lines 9, 10, 11, and 12.  

For more photos of the CAF 8000 Series cars, please click here.

 

Photographing the Same Train on Two Continents

Over the years I’ve managed some neat feats in terms of fleets and/or vehicles that I’ve photographed.  At one time, I had a photo of every vehicle in the active TCAT fleet in Ithaca, NY.  I have photos of most (but not all) of the 46 Jerusalem Light Rail Alstom Citadis 302s.  However, back in January, I accomplished a feat that I don’t think I ever expected to do: photographing the same train car on two different continents.  And just to be clear, this wasn’t accomplished in Istanbul.

In 1998, the Madrid Metro accepted delivery of its 6000 Series cars from CAF for operation on that system’s Line 9.  The 6000 Series were the first Madrid subway cars to feature exterior destination signs and an articulated joint between each pair of cars, and were designed with the needs of Line 9 in mind.  I rode and photographed these cars in Madrid each time that I was in that city, first in 2005 and then again in 2008.

In 2013, most of the 6000 Series cars were sold to the Buenos Aires Underground for about 32.6 million Euro, a purchase that has since been derided as the worst rolling stock acquisition in the hundred-plus year history of the Buenos Aires system.  Buenos Aires purchased these cars to operate on their Line B, despite some significant differences between the specifications of Buenos Aires Line B and the wide profile Madrid Metro lines.  Most notably, the Madrid Metro powers its trains using overhead catenary, as does Buenos Aires for five of its six subway lines, but Line B is the lone Buenos Aires Subte line that uses third rail power.  In other words, Buenos Aires officials ordered a fleet of subway cars with the intention of using them on the one line in their network where there was no way to power the cars without significant modifications being made to both the tunnels and the 6000 Series cars themselves.  The 6000 Series cars were also narrower the other cars that had historically operated on Line B, requiring “skirts” to be added to the cars in order to close the gap between the train and the station platforms.  The 6000 Series trains ultimately entered service in Buenos Aires starting in 2014.

I traveled to Buenos Aires in January 2018 and explored the city’s subway network, so naturally, I re-encountered the 6000 Series cars in their new home.  I don’t have logs of which cars I rode in Madrid and which cars I rode in Buenos Aires, but after my trip, I compared the unit numbers in the photos I took in Madrid with those I took in Buenos Aires.  Through that process, I discovered that I photographed car 6006 at the Avenida de America station in Madrid on June 11, 2008, and photographed the same car at Carlos Pellegrini, station in Buenos Aires on January 10, 2018.

Here are the aforementioned photos:

Rail Photo of the Month: March 2017

CAF 5000 Series 5037

CAF 5000 Series 5037

Location: Diagonal, Barcelona, Spain
Operator of Vehicle: Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB)
Date of Photo: June 6, 2008

 

Based on the fact that this website’s Washington, DC section is one of the largest that I have, my guess is most people expect to see photos of WMATA rolling stock when they hear about a CAF 5000 Series.  Well if that is what you were expecting to see here, surprise!  WMATA doesn’t have the world’s only CAF 5000 Series cars, and the March Rail Photo of the Month features one of the other ones.  Specifically, this CAF built 5000 Series train operates in Barcelona.  Thirty-nine of these trains were delivered starting in 2005 and currently operate on lines 3 and 5.  

While these trains operate a world away from their Washington cousins, they do have some similarities.  Both the Barcelona and DC systems have automatic train operation and their 5000 series trains both have on board diagnostics systems.  However, there are also some notable differences.  Barcelona’s Metro uses overhead catenary lines to power its trains whereas Washington has an electrified third rail.  The Barcelona 5000 Series also has open gangways between each car, while the DC 5000 Series cars are in married pairs with no internal passage between the cars (except in emergencies).  Finally, to my knowledge, there are no plans to replace the Barcelona 5000 Series any time soon, while the incoming Kawasaki 7000 Series cars will ultimately force the retirement of the CAF 5000 Series in DC.  

For more photos of Barcelona’s CAF 5000 Series railcars, please click here.