Bombardier Eurotram Exhibition, Sydney

Bombardier, a rolling stock manufacturer based in Canada has exhibited a one of the new 'Eurotrams' it is building for the Portugese city of Porto in Sydney. The 'standard' Eurotram design was aquired by Bombardier when they took over Adtranz. They also aquired the Incentro design, but the EEC competition commission made them give up the Variotram design, which was aquired by Stadler. Sydney's existing fleet are Variotrams.

Porto number 018 has been shortened by 2 modules and shipped out for a marketing tour. After Sydney, Bombardier plan to take the tram to Melbourne and to show it off in that city as well - only in Melbourne they hope to actually operate it. Operation in Sydney appears to be technically possible but since most of the Sydney light rail line is out of sight, it's not considered worth the trouble. However looking at photos of the Porto tram in pieces, I don't think the articulation will cope with the eastern tram ramp in Sydney where the trams are required to flex in two dimensions at the same time. Sydney's trams had the articulation bracing redesigned to cope with this bit of track. This of course may be simple to rectify on the Eurotram body.

Connex are also using this as an oportunity to drum up interest in the proposed city loop extension of the Sydney tram system. Connex were also giving out show bags containing a two for one tram ride tickets, some brochures about attractions along the SLR route and folded card model of 2105.

Metro Light Rail's Exhibition Site.

My observations

In recent times i've been on 3 different models of 100% low floor tram, Sydney's Variotrams, two versions of Citadis (Lyon and Melbourne) and the Porto demo Eurotram. I've not had a chance to ride a Combino.

I would rank the internal space and look of the Eurotram last. The Citadis, Combino and Variotram have no internal partitions - the articulations are full body width - the Eurotram does not have full width articulation, and this doesn't appear to be just a 'feature' of the Porto build - The European Railway Picture Gallery has some interior shots of the Strasbourg Eurotram and they show the same design. I feel this significantly reduces the 'openess' of the tram and also gives 'blind' spots in the passenger cabin were low life could vandalise the tram and not be observed by the crew. It also means the driver has to rely video cameras to see that the doorways are clear, there is no clear sighting through the cabin interior. Like the Citadis the Eurotram is equiped with video camera rear view 'mirrors'.

I'm also no fan of the swept back nose - why waste length on a aerodynamic nose on a vehicle that will never exceed 80Km/hr in service? How many K/W of airconditioning power is needed to get rid of the extra heat that glass captures? A flat front is perfectly appropiate for a tram. The Porto Eurotram makes the nose look even longer as it has a 'bumper' that appears to be designed to cope with low speed collisions with out damage. The Porto tram is also equiped with a multifunction coupler and the coupler cover door is power operated. I assume they intend MU operation in service.

However it seems the swept back look catches the attention of the public at large, and public transport is as much marketing as function...

Another issue is why would Sydney want them ?. While Connex have apparently indicated that they would buy Eurotrams for the city loop extension this then leaves them with small numbers of incompatable trams. When questioned the Bombardier rep did conceed that it probably was not a great idea to have two small fleets like that and that building more Variotrams was an option. He also indicated that they were canvasing other markets, like Melbourne and Adelaide and that one option would be to sell the Variotrams to Adelaide! Then make Sydney all the one type. Of course Adelaide has more than 7 H class trams running the Glenelg service, although 7 lowfloors might be enough to provide the required accessable service level. (And they are currently fitting chopper controls and airconditioning to these trams so they are not intending to retire them any time soon.) The entire question is who would buy em :-) If Alstom stay invoved in Yarra trams, more Citadis is what they will get.

The Bombardier rep did say several times to people that while the demo tram was from Europe, any for Australia would be built here.

The 'heritage' of the company that built it is visible as well, parts of the drivers console have Adtranz logos and do some of the body panels!.

For train/tram fans, also on at the same time is a display on the London Jubilee line project up on the 4th floor of customs house. I didn't know it was up there, we went up just to see what was around, and I heard the distinctive sound of a Jubilee line tube train...

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