Some photos of the Sydney RER

PavløvA_YT

For anybody who does not know, I live in Sydney, Australia. We have an extensive and complex railway system, with double decker trains much like the Paris RER. I would actually say the two systems are nearly identical (however, Paris has better trains because they are Alstom X'Trapolis Tagus/Duplex/Cityduplex trains instead of the chinese and korean trains we have...)

Anyway, our older rolling stock were made entirely in Australia. Recently, Australian manufacturing dried up, and nobody builds anything here...

No more talking from me though, here are some trains, and descriptions about what they are.

81 class locos -- I do not know what they are pulling

Tram-train in Canberra

My local station with an RER train (I am officially calling our system an RER from now on)

This train is a Tangara - built by Gonninan (Australian trainbuilder, now defunct) in the 1990s. Highly recommend listening to one of these - they sound beautiful

Coupled point of two Tangaras

CAF Urbos tram-train - these have batteries, we should have bought an Alstom Citadis with ground power over this!

Side photo of same tram

This train is called a Waratah - New South Wales' state emblem. They are, obviously, made in China. An X'Trapolis Cityduplex would have done just as well as this does.

These are ok trains...

Their traction motors sound incredible -- listen to one someday!

At Clarendon station

From the level crossing

D Set in Central - also called "Mariyung", the aboriginal word for "Emu", which is a large flightless bird in Australia, which also means EMU, as in "Electrical Multiple Unit" (UME in France)

30 class steam locomotive; in the background is a brand-new 94 class freight locomotive.

Alstom Metropolis - these have been in service since 2019. They run on the Sydney "Metro" but in reality, it is not actually a metro, stops can be over 5km apart in places. In essence, this is an MR6V, and this is basically Paris Metro Line 16, so not actually a metro.

The best Sydney train, the Tangara. I love these things.

Another tram-train photo. I race these on my mountain bike sometimes. Visible is the enormous battery on the roof.

Another D Set photo

10-car D Set and an 8-car V Set; the V Sets are getting replaced by the D Sets (which are much nicer in my opinion)

D Sets are composed of a 6-car train and a 4-car train; they have Silicon Carbide (SiC) inverters from Mitsubishi...

94 Class locomotive from before in better detail

42 class, got a photo before this crashed into a parked train.

XPT, a diesel-hauled high speed passenger train (it is just a HST with lower gearing -- this is the only place on Earth you can still hear a Paxman Valenta screaming for its life)

Volvo bus

Routemaster bus, from London.