Across Rural Picturesque France with SNCF's smallest train, the X73500
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- čas přidán 19. 06. 2024
- Bonjour à tous,
A few weeks ago, I went to Aurillac to record the new night train from here, but on my way, I had the occasion to travel on one of my favorite railcar ever, the X73500 and FINALLY I was able to record a video on these wonderful little trains.
Enjoy, and don't forget to like/leave a comment to help the channel :-)
- TRIP INFORMATION -
Date: DECEMBER 2023
Railway company: SNCF (TER AURA)
Route : Clermont-Ferrand to
Time : 2h21
Price : 33,40€
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00:00 : Intro
00:21 : Onward arrival
00:53 : Our ride today
01:45 : Not suitable for this TER service ?
02:33 : Seat Check
03:08 : The X73500
04:29 : Neussargues
05:02 : Douce France
05:30 : Mid roll ads
06:04 : Monts du Cantal
06:35 : Le Lioran
06:54 : Walkthroughish
07:27 : Toilets Time
08:00 : Ghost train
08:34 : Spotted
09:01 : Arrival in Aurillac/thoughts
09:39 : Outro
Four bike racks on a 90s railcar? Thats some real forward thinking. In Italy we got the first bike racks in the 2010s.
in austria we have them since '87, but good luck getting the bike into that narrow doorway and up the steps
If you call this railcar small, you should see ČD class 810 (still operating, yes). However, they never had a problem with signalling in our country eventhough they are much smaller.
Yeah, this is a small but nice Railcar. Still operates in the Border Region Germany /Czechia where i Live. Always a funny and slightly nostalgic Journey in this Thing.
They call i the " Bohemian Mary " here😂
They refurbished a bunch of these pretty recently for the Moravia region as well. Class 811, with more spacious seats and air conditioning!
Yeah, I know. I am a conductor on these trains.@@burkhardschlenkrich1870
#RegioMouse 🐁
We also have those here in Hungary, but we call them bzmot. Very nice little railcars😀
Beautiful trip. I liked the new format of speaking at the beginning and using subtitles for the rest of the journey.
Lovely little trains. I call them Gherkins! Wish SNCF would re-open many of it's rural branch lines for these little guys to run on.
Ce que j'aime sur ces trains c'est les grandes fenêtres d'une part mais aussi la moquette et ce bleu si particulier à bord ! C'est vraiment un de mes trains favoris !
I totally agree - these trains are not suited to such long journeys, especially if you can't get a seat!
I used to travel on these to work, a 20-minute trip. That's what they're good for. An AGC or two would be much better on this route.
Great trip report, as always!
You need to come to the UK to try our Pacer!
No matter how low your expectations, I guarantee you will still be disappointed! 😂♥
🤣My first thought when used the term "bus" to describe a rail vehicle.
Thankfully the Pacers have now been withdrawn from service and confined to heritage lines. These trains show what the Pacers could of been like if the government gave a fig about the north though!
No Pacers ran since about 2021. Maybe he should review the Stourbridge Shuttle Class 139 instead?
So happy he talks 😊
I've heard them being called the toilet car or porta-potty here in Germany, because the (very nice and accessible) toilet uses between a quarter and a third of the entire floor space of the unit. :)
Sympa ce format de video axé sur le matériel. On en voit peu ayant comme sujet les TER, automoteurs ou tractés, Xter, Omneo, AGC et autres. Merci.
I remember travelling on one of the DB units travelling along the Leipzig-Chemnitz line and found them to be quite nice. Could imagine such a style of unit with big windows to admire the view coming in handy on some routes in the UK. Would need to fit in the loading gauge, so no worries about any X73500s leaving France!
They are nice, but prone to trouble.
There are therefore frequent breakdowns and vehicle shortages, particularly on the Merseburg - Querfurt and Weißenfels - Zeitz routes. The very first vehicles delivered to the DB that do not have 1st class are used there. But the vehicles used between Leipzig and Geithain also repeatedly cause problems.
Those in Thuringia, on the other hand, are more reliable, which is probably also due to the better workshop (in Erfurt).
Thank you for the compliment from Erfurt, but to be fair it has to be said that the vehicles between Leipzig and Geithain are also used more heavily in an S-Bahn-like service. In the event of major disruptions or maintenance, the vehicles also come to us in Erfurt because we simply have more experience with them. Especially as the vehicles are also quite maintenance-unfriendly, especially in the engine and transmission area.
@@themazeLE
Ich weiß, kommen ja regelmäßig bei mir lang. 😉
J' ai fait le trajet Clermont- Ferrand Aurillac l ' année dernière, très beau trajet surtout sur la partie Cantalienne et le matériel est très bien, belle couleur, confort...
Looks like a most picturesque and comfortable ride! Thank you, Thibault!!
While Brits were getting battered around in pacers, mainland Europeans were comfortably riding around in these.
Not really fair until about 8 yr ago we had the much older units on the Limoges Angouleme route We then got the upgrade but for 6 years have had to revert to buses as sncf allowed the track to deteriorate so much it's unsafe and spent 6 years arguing with local government over who is paying for the repairs
Great video. I'm nearly 70 and even I thought it was cool to get spotted!
If you ever find yourself in Madrid you should try the C-9 commuter line. It is a meter-gauge railway that goes up in the mountains of the Sierra de Guadarrama with trains from the 70s! It is a short ride, so it is perfect if you are in Madrid a short time!
But hurry up!!!! These trains will be replaced with new EMUs soon
Yeah, I think the replacement is in September of 2026
Why not the Talgo? The most horrible train of the whole Europe...
I really did not expect that thing to sound as good as it does, now I also wanna ride it
3:17: "It's basically a bus on wheels!" So.... a bus? 😂
Thank you for the superb review 👍 Strasbourg has a fleet of these operating cross-border services, often with the same capacity issues 😅
Great trip. Smallest Train for intercity trip, unique.
Great video - we live near Aurillac and use the trains to Figeac and Toulouse - mostly single track so lots of delays but always very curteous staff , thsnk you
You probably would love Clermont-Ferrand - Béziers and Clermont-Ferrand - Nîmes
Love and appriciate from pakistan ❤
Basically a bus on rails and one of the smallest units I know. Maybe the Stadler Regioshuttle (german class 650) is even smaller.
ĈD class 810 is much smaller
Looks so cute 😂
I agree that a class 735 railcar is not suitable for long journeys. But each single car has four axles and eight wheels. Checking with my Platform 5 guide to French Trains (page 85), the wheel arrangement is given as 1A-A1. That in effect means that there are two BOGIES, but only the inner axle is powered. The Platform 5 guide also refers to the problem with these railcars sometimes not operating track circuits.
Great little railcar and suitable for railway lines with few passengers. Thank you Thibault💕👌
Really like the little train
You can also find those seats on earlier Class 377s, 375, 450 and I think 350 as well (all however with smaller tables than in France)😢
I rode one between Mullheim (Germany) and Mulhouse (France) in the autumn 2022. It was very charming little train with all of noises like the long distance omnibus. What's amazing was that nobody was wearing masks that day in the train despite Germany's idiotic mask mandate. None of the SNCF conductors bother to enforce everyone to mask up on the German portion of route. So blissful wonderful!
For some reason, I really like railcars. Maybe it's because it's the smallest possible passenger train, and I like miniature things (including miniature trains).
SO EXPENSIVE
I dont know, but I love the french "whales" everytime I see them I think about holidays...
Smallest railcar is the Z 100, isn’t it ? Also this is sometimes up to 2xAGC so the composition is super random in Toulouse-Clermont.
Great video through real France 😌
Les 2 AGC c'est généralement le samedi au 871209 et dimanche au 871206
I like with voiceover
it's great to see more rural France!
I rode these in France I think! They were nice but I really liked the TER200 service more!
Great video !!
Such small railcars (810) defended and saved branch lines in Czech Republic from being closed and dismantled - and they're using it till today (both railcars and railway lines). Unfortunately Poland had different way of thinking and only in 1999 they've closed more than 1kkm of railway lines which all in all results in being first in EU in amount of cars per 1000 inhabitants (2022).
Great video, again! 👏👏👏
I see these small trains in nantes all the time. They operate from nantes to st nazaire.
I rode the blue whales for 20 years now - on the line between Strasbourg and Offenburg. Generally they are lovely and I much prefer them to German RS1 shuttles that are also used on the same line - they have much comfier seats and an aircon!
However they are going to be replaced with brand new trains starting from 2025, and while I will miss our whales for nostalgic reasons - it's definitely the time for them to go.
The issues are numerous:
1. Capacity - it seems that they can only operate up to a double formation max (as in your video) and that is increasingly not enough here.
2. Electrification - the line to Offenburg was electrified long time ago (early 2000s I believe) and it's time to replace the diesels with modern EMUs.
3. Speed - the line had its speed increased to 200km/h and new trains will make full use of that.
4. Unification - both blue whales and German RS1s will be replaced by a single unified train fleet, which will be nice for consistency.
They also have single leaf doors and the weirdest placement of door open/close buttons I've ever seen.
Wow
The capacity on this relation (Aurillac - Clermont) is quite often up to the limit when it's only two ATERs, but they sometime use three or AGCs. What's quite odd is that for the limited Toulouse - Aurillac service, they use a liO AGC from Occitanie, but for the full Toulouse - Clermont service it's always two ATERs. Even funnier is that the trip can cost less for young people when booking Clermont - Toulouse, which fall under Région Occitanie's prices, than booking the AURA price Clermont - Aurillac.
Le Toulouse Clermont à 1€, c'est la plus belle faille tarifaire française de la SNCF !
Bon d'accord, avec le confort d'un 73500 pendant 6h...
@@theojnd c’est la région Occitanie qu’il faut remercier pour ça, la SNCF ne décide pas des tarifs sur les TERs
@@sachatrin2981 évidemment que c'est à la région occitanie ! Ça ne pourrait pas venir de Lyon cette pépite 😉
@@theojnd ça c’est sûr….
Nice train, but there's something I didn't understand: you mentioned that it has four (4) wheels. Does it mean that it doesn't run on bogies but on single axles like the Pacer in the UK or Schienenbus in Germany (as well as the equivalent in Czechia, Hungary etc)? And despite this they are allowed to go140 km/h?
I just looked at some screenshots, it's two bogies so eight wheels (or four pairs of wheels).
This makes sense. @@MarioFanGamer659
They were also ordered and operated in Luxembourg by CFL, but they later sold them to SNCF as they were too small, and all lines in Luxembourg are electrified
That's funny and made me laugh :) Blaming no snow on the day on "climate change". If only we could count each week of every year to be exactly the same. Another great, and informative, (and funny) vid. Thanks!!
I saw one of these in Metz and was bemused by then
Finally Thibault made a video about this nice little train.
I have been writing in the comments that he has to do these small trains, and Thibault delivers :)
🔥🔥🔥🔥
Speaking of the blue whale X73500 there's the other version which itself can run onto Austrian ÖBB Infra Deutsche Bahn Netze Punktförmige Zugbeeinflussung Sifa tracks the X73900 replacement for those B85500
Alors en soit, une UM2 de 73500 a la même capacité qu'un AGC 3 caisses 😉
Il aurait fallu une UM3 de 73500 (qui ducoup, aurait la même capacité qu'un AGC/Régiolis 4 caisses)
Please do more trips within France. Thinking of France people thing of TGV which is maintained great but what is with all the other traffic on smaller routes? I liked this trip so much but the train was crowded, people pay high fares and than thy have to stand for hours? Not good.
Boa viagem ai simplys trem piqueno show
Similar to the Australian sprinters based in Victoria.
Vou experimentar
With two diesel engines with 2x 400 hp these little guys are far too overpowered 😂
Basically a french Class 142 Pacer (but a lot better made)
Nice report thibault, reminds me of the time in Germany when we were told our train was terminated and we’d to get the bus to the station the train was supposed to go to, yep the bus was a train similar to this one, I thought there was something lost in translation but I was told yes the train was called a bus because it served local traffic, perhaps someone with more knowledge about the German rail system could explain it better
IDK exactly how it is in Germany but I am from its neighbour country to the north, Denmark. And here in Denmark we have something thats a bit similar. Basically here we have 2 different rail systems. We have the national railway system that is usually run either by DSB, or with operations contracted out to Arriva (soon to be renamed GoCollective). And then we have the "Private" railways. The private railways arent really private per say but historically all their shares were usually owned by local authorities and maybe a local businessman or 2. The private railways were always secondary routes and built to a lower quality standard.
In the 70's, and 80's when regional transit agencies started to be formed across Denmark on a county level, the private railways were incorporated into them, and treated similarly to bus lines. This includes fare integration, so the same tickets were valid for buses and the private railways, which weren't the case for the state railways.
In 2007 the counties were dismantled and replaced by regions but the roles of these lines stayed the same generally. And in many regions there's still no ticket integration between local transit and the state railways or Arrivas trains, but there is to the local "private" railways. But since the 2010's, some of these regionally run private railways have taken over some state railway routes. Notably in Northern Jutland, and on a line in Zealand where operations were handed over directly. And in Western Jutland a state railway line switched hands to the regional operator through a tender.
In Denmark, all of these private railway lines are run with small 2 car DMU's. Most commonly Alstom Lint 41's, but also Siemens Desiro's, Adtranz IC2's, and Düwag Regio-Sprinters. And several of these railways are now considering switching to battery trains. One operator has already placed an order for 7 Siemens Mireo battery trains, and another made a tender, awarded the contract to CAF, but then cancelled it due to the tender being poorly run and are now redoing the tender.
@@drdewott9154 thanks for the very detailed explanation, that certainly helps me understand the workings of the local systems, next time I’m on holiday in northern Germany I’ll certainly try my best to visit Denmark, hi from Ireland
You may try the 470 series of spain between madrid and Sigüenza
Sharp paint scheme
Im pretty sure i rode one in grand est from thann to Mulhouse on the line shared with a tram train. Much Better forthat route than this id say
What are the tracks like on this "rural" service? well maintained and smooth? or rough ?
In terms of equipment, I suspect this has to do with what division of SNCF has that route and what equipment that division is allowed to have.
Do you know if these trains are transmission from diesel engines, or are they diesel electric traction?
In Canada, the RDCs from Budd were transmission. But they could put any number of cars on it. Our commuter trains in montreal (Rogaud line) before 1981 would sometimes have 9 of them strung together. But VIA in intercity service such as Montréal Ottawa or Montral Québec would only use 3 or 4 max (above which a loco hauled train is less costly to operate). RDCs hit 160kmh on a straight stretch of track near Montréal coing back from Ottawa.
AFAIK:
Tracks were rebuilt/renovated over the last few years so the ride is pretty smooth.
The ATERs are diesel engines, but this line also sees AGC Trains with diesel electric transmission.
they have hydraulic flow transmissions from Voith
Is it the longest TER route in France (I mean Toulouse - Clermont-Ferrand) or there is sth longer (I guess Paris-Lyon by TER is a bit shorter, around 5hrs)?
Avec Marseille Briançon, Lyon Tours, et Nîmes Clermont, ce sont bien les 4 TER les plus longs de France il me semble. Mais 6h dans un X73500 c'est éprouvant, d'autant plus sans prise électrique
Damn the Google Earth lag.
"a bus in wheels"??
Thankfully, our buses come with wheels as standard😂
How are you able to film people in public close up like this? I thought it was illegal in France.
It is not. It applies only to newspapers, TV or cinema. Or photographs if they intend to sell their work.
CZcams content creators can freely film people, as long as it is filmed in public spaces.
L'absence de prises pour recharger les portables dans le Clermont - Aurillac n'est pas digne de la Région AURA - qui est l'Autorité de Mobilité si on cherche qui commande, paye et donc décide dans ce Pays. For all of you, Cantal (Aurillac) is the heart of France, its heaven for people, landscape, food and art de vivre.
6 hours on that would be a nightmare! You'd have to be some sort of masochist to try it...
Try 6 hours then it broke down 😭
In fairness, very few passengers travel from Clermont Ferrant to Toulouse, except maybe for some students who are short of money (this is a regional train, and it is subsidized by the region. The fare was €2 (!))
Most passengers leaving Clermont Ferrand call at some intermediate station, specially since the end section can be reached through other, fastest train lines. Passengers in intermediate stations usually use this train to go to the nearest « big » station where they can catch a fast train.
All in all, for most people, travel time onboard is less than two hours.
Wouldn't work in the U. S. The FRA would not allow a rail car with only four wheels for the reasons stated in the video. So I guess Stadler Flirt is still the best European option available here for new self-propelled Diesel trains.
Having just viewed the trip by X73500 (Clermont-Ferrand) I fear that proposed commuter train from Fort Lauderdale to Miami (by FEC tracks) FL, USA, will become as crowded as the rail service shown on your video (you tube), especially for special events (concert or basketball). Can you show an example of short- length ride which features a double-decker trainset for the service?
My opinion for the ideal regional passenger rail service in South Florida would be a design of five units of double-decker rail cars: a control-cab coach at each end; two intermediate coaches, plus a double-decker "power-pack" unit which would feature a Hydrogen (H2) reserve to fuel a modified diesel motor and H2 fueled fuel cells (close to zero emissions).
Why? In this part of Florida the main auto route is highly-congested Interstate 95 where vehicle traffic often stops or slows to less than 35 km/h - 21mi/h in mid-afternoon (with greater emissions). The area needs more frequent passenger trains to have greater capacity and more frequency.
News flash: Iceberg A-23-a has broken away from the Antarctic ice sheet and into the open ocean. It is said to be slightly larger than the geographic size of the State of Rhode Island.
I am not persuaded that the policy lunge (by USA government) toward 65% EV motor vehicles in North America will be accomplished by 2035. Perhaps more passenger train services would be a more reasonable goal. Any comments?
26 JAN. 2024
Well hitachi Italy has made such type of train (sort of). It is an hybrid (HTR) train with 3 different engines, one grid powered, one disesel powered and one battery powered, although not H2 powered. The only thing is that it is not a double decker train, since it is used in lines with little demand, but the same company makes a double decker train with the same platform, the etr 512, which is basically the trainset used in high demand regional corridors.
Are there any dual-power trains that could be reviewed? That is: able to utilize catenary electric power, as well as also able to run on diesel power on non-electrified tracks.
In Italy HTR type trains made by hitachi have just begun their operation and they fulfill a similar role as the train in this video. The H stands for hybrid as a matter of fact.
French BGCs are identical to diesel AGCs (that Thibault reviewed) except for the addition of the pantograph.
oh ! czcams.com/video/shbtJi7N2I8/video.htmlsi=-1S3theUpzsFgiwP&t=402 - la gare de Bourg Saint Maurice est connectée avec le funiculaire des Arcs !
I think you meant to say "a bus on rails."
Déchire cet autorail
So many TER lines are horrendously underserved and crowded..
Wir nennen den in Deutschland "Walfisch"
Oookay...so no one here is concerned about the VERY high ticket prices? Why do they charge so much??😢😢
Isn't the X 74500 the smallest SNCF train?
They might be worth a video too.
Well, you're kinda right. But the X74500 is a DMU and metric :)
It's NOT climate change, it's just the weather. It changes all the time, it has been that way since time began.
j'ai la haine contre ce train personnellement je trouve c'est le pire design de tous, on se retrouve serré avec les autres passagers et les sièges sont agencés de manière trop étrange... Heureusement que je tombe pas souvent dessus
Mon préféré qui circule sur ma voie c'est le Régiolis avec ses sièges violets, le best
Not that unique, are they? Germany uses the same model, and they have a few more models that are somewhat like that.
Please don't do voiceovers
I ❤ 🚂🚃 trains 🚄 🚅 trams 🚈🚞
take a ride, I have a folder on ''transportation''
(folder 4) I think you will love them too :)