Siemens already has a plant in Sacramento that makes light rail vehicles. Presumably the same plant would be expanded/modified for high speed trains.
Alstom has a plant in upstate New York that would probably do the same thing.

I doubt any tech transfer agreement would fly. And what American company would they partner with? GM? Ford? Ha.

AFAIK they bought one of the companies that built the middle cars since, but the other two are owned by Bombardier and Alstom and the Alstom comp was the lead contractor.

Rafael: There’s no reason you can’t have motors on more than half the axles, e.g. in most modern Shinkansen designs.

it is quite possible to have flexible consists composed of self-propelled rail cars, at least if the grid voltage is low enough to permit its direct application to the power electronics and motor windings, without any on-board transformer in the circuit. That way, you get distributed traction even though the consist is not a multiple unit at all.

For trains with moderate top speeds, there’s only moderate value in aerodynamic design. Subways and commuter/regional trains have to stop frequently. Unless brake energy is actually recuperated, a large fraction of total fuel consumption is due to acceleration.

The end cars of a subway train are always different in that they feature driver cabs. However, I believe you were referring to the aerodynamic properties. See above.

@ цarьchitect -

Eurostar trainsets are 394m long, the longest such beasts in the world.

At 300km/h (186mph), a distance of ~360m (~1200ft) between pantographs may well be sufficient to guarantee reliable contact for the one in the rear. It depends on the details of the OCS design, the mass-spring system of the pantograph handlebar etc. Usually, HSR trainsets are more like 200m (660ft) long. Two may be combined into a single train, possibly with an active pantograph at each end.

Close, but no cigar. First, multiple unit simply refers to the fact that multiple cars are semi-permanently linked together into a trainset, with a fully equipped driver cab at each end. Basically, changing the length of a trainset or swapping out a damaged car is something that is only done in a maintenance yard, though it’s easier to accomplish for conventional two-bogie-per-car designs than those featuring Jacobs bogies (Alstom) or wheelsets (Talgo).

There are four types of multiple units: unpowered (cp. locomotive-drawn ÖBB railjet), diesel-mechanical (DMU), diesel-electric (DEMU) and electric (EMU). The self-propelled variants are far more common and used for all kinds of applications, from streetcars to high speed trains. EMUs typically feature either third rail pickups or pantographs. In high speed applications, the ends of the trainset invariably feature distinctive nose cones to improve the aerodynamics.

A conventional tractor-trailer trainset features a power car at either end. These are effectively dedicated locomotives whose styling is fully integrated with that of the passenger cars. Examples: Alstom TGV, Talgo 350, ETR 500, Hyundai Rotem KTX-II, SJ 2000 etc.

By contrast, the ICE3, Velaro, Alstom AGV, Bombardier Zefiro 380 and many Japanese designs feature electric motors on the axles of every other car. Thus, at most 50% of all axles are powered. The powered cars also contain the power converters (rectifiers and inverters) that deliver three-phase current of the frequency corresponding to the desired electric motor speed. This concept is variously described as distributed traction or distributed EMU to differentiate it from the older tractor-trailer paradigm.

The unpowered cars of a distributed EMU house either primary transformers or battery packs. This keeps axle loads at or below 17 metric tonnes, the de facto international limit for high speed trains. For a given speed rating, train and track maintenance overheads are roughly proportional to the fourth power of axle load. The axle load limit is also why there is no bi-level distributed EMU capable of very high speed just yet.

Pantographs cannot support the extremely high currents that would be drawn by high speed trains off a legacy 3000V OCS at speeds in excess of 250km/h - 155mph (cp. Italy). Note that pantograph contact induces mechanical vibrations in the OCS, which could interfere with the operation of a second active pantograph at the rear of the train. In most cases, operators therefore prefer to make do with just one pantograph per train or at least, per trainset. On the other hand, electric motor windings and the power semiconductor devices needed to control them are currently limited to 1500-3000V. This discrepancy is why high speed trains need heavy on-board transformers at all.

Afaik, the primary function of the on-board battery packs is to provide ride-through in phase break sections of the OCS. There may be others.

If these do manage to make their way over to California I think California should do what the Chinese did and have a tech-transfer agreement. It would enable us to build these trains here. I think they should do that with any Manufacturer that enters the market here.

You say that one picture contains an ICE 2, but it’s an ICE 1. I wouldn’t really bother with this if you hadn’t linked to a page that explicitly tells you how to spot the difference between the two. =)

You could have told us the reason for the redesign (noise? less sensitive to cross winds?)

You somehow imply Siemens’ involvement in the Eschede disaster (even if the “primary blame” lay with DB) and then a few paragraphs down you state (correctly) that they had nothing to do with the relevant parts of the ICE 1 at all. Not to mention that the design of the ICE 1 as delivered wasn’t at fault at all. It was shody work-arounds by DB for limitations of the ICE 1 design, limitations they themselves had caused because of DB’s unmatched expertise at cutting the wrong corners (just about every stupid decision they’d made the previous ten years came back to haunt them at Eschede).

Even the ICE 3 (as well as ICE T and TD) was still a DB project first and foremost. For the Velaro Siemens had to redesign half the train as those parts had come from Bombardier, Adtranz and Alstom. The problem with the broken axle you linked to was mostly due to the axle being half the size of the Velaro’s because that size was specified in the German railroad regulations from 1908 and god forbid the DB would pay a cent more for bigger axles just because common sense would necessitate it.