"Doctor Green" On Test At Velim

JR Central, JR West and other infrastructure managers have their „Doctor Yellow“ laboratory trains for infrastructure monitoring purposes. Adif will soon have a fleet of three „Doctor Greens“. In December 2019 Adif awarded Stadler Valencia a 74.4 million EUR contract for three trains for diagnostics purposes, two of 1,668 mm gauge, the other, for the high speed network, of 1,435 mm gauge. All three are EDMUs, capable of operating off 3 kV DC and 25 kV AC and independently from the electrified network. One of the three, the one for use on the normal gauge lines, arrived at the VUZ Velim test facility on 20 February 2023.

The Adif FLIRTs are dual-voltage (3 kV DC + 25 kV 50 Hz) and dual-power trains, so in addition to the three cars, they also have a Power Module, which in this case houses four 480 kW MTU engines. The trains with a Bo' 2' 2' 2' Bo' axle arrangement have a 1,650 kW power on the wheel flange and a top speed of 160 km/h in diesel mode, while in electric mode they have a maximum power of 3,200 kW and a top speed of 200 km/h. The diagnostics technology is being delivered by MerMec.

Although the contract was awarded to Stadler Valencia, the three diagnostics FLIRT EDMUs are being built at the Siedlce works. Stadler's Praha design office was also involved in the development of this variant and this is the first use of FLIRTs for a purpose other than passenger transport. Another unusual design is a version for the rescue trains for ÖBB for the new Austrian base tunnels, which were ordered in December 2020 in five examples and are even triple-power trains.

Adif explained to us: "The new laboratory trains built by Stadler have been given the numbers 162-010, 011 and 012. The Talgo-built diagnostics train has already the number 162-001. If there were more testing trains manufactured by Talgo, then they would have the numbers 162-002, 162-003, etc. The new laboratory FLIRTs will be located in Madrid. A maintenance workshop is going to be built in the south."

We also asked Adif, when the two 1,668 mm-gauge units will be delivered to Adif. The latter answered us: "The broad-gauge trains are scheduled for delivery in the first half of 2024 and the standard-gauge train in 2025."