A ride on the new trains for London Underground's Piccadilly Line

Metro Report International takes a ride on the first of the new Siemens Mobility trainsets for London Underground's Piccadilly Line, which is on test at the Wegberg-Wildenrath Test & Validation Centre in Germany.

[TrainJosh]

I will miss the 73TS for sure because they were what I rode on when I first visited England in the winter of ‘08

[Duncan]

When are they gonna replace the Bakerloo line trains, those things are falling apart!

[ianmcclavin]

I can remember when both the existing Bakerloo and Piccadilly Line trains were brand spanking new!! Newer trains than these, such as the 1983 Stock, have already been scrapped!

[itsthatsebguy]

Is there any raw footage of this train where you can hear the sound of the motors?

[mnzfg]

I wonder why the windows are so small, almost airplane style.

[KyrilPG]

Nice !
The face is very Alstom-like with the LED bands contour for the red / white lights.
Great that they've reduced weight but I'm a bit surprised by the choice of alternating carriages with and without bogies.
Sure, it decreases weight but it limits train consists to odd numbers of carriages and probably creates more strain on the joints between carriages. All the weight of non-bogie carriages being supported by the hinges connecting with bogie carriages.

While intercarriage / Jacobs bogies, like on many Alstom, CAF or Talgo trains, are a better solution in my opinion because they offer the same reduction in bogie number / weight (half + 1 compared to conventional bogie placement), but they also :

- do not increase structural forces on joints, the bogies being the articulation joints where the weight is directly supported by and transmitted to the bogies,
- reduce the likelihood of jackknifing in case of accident by rigidifying the consist,
- allow for middle carriages to all be on the same structural model, reducing the number of different structures to only 2 (end cars & mid cars) instead of 3 or more (end cars, mid cars with bogies, mid cars without bogies), commonality being always more economical,
- allow consists to have any number of carriages (odd or even), trains can be shortened or lengthened at will,
- have better turn radius and reduce platform gaps because the wheelbase distance is pretty much consistent and reduces the clearance needed as the bogies become the most protruding points of the train on the external side of a curve, which is particularly important in London's Tube where there are many curved stations.

Plus, intercarriage bogies are already often considered less practical for maintenance than conventional ones because they require to support one side of the carriage when decoupling, but with this new trains all non-bogie carriages will need support on both ends to be decoupled.

The Bombardier / CAF MI20 trains that are set to arrive on Paris RER line B have shorter carriages mounted mainly on intercarriage bogies and very wide doors located near the bogies specifically to reduce the platform gaps at the numerous curvy stations of this line.
The Stockholm Pendeltåg and Copenhagen S-Tog, both S-Bahn like networks, have respectively X60 trains (Alstom Coradia Nordic) and Litra SA / SE trains (Alstom-LHB and Siemens), that are articulated on intercarriage bogies, much like the fairly recent Z50000 / Francilien trains (Bombardier) running on Paris Transilien network and as temporary reinforcements on RER line E.

We know that Siemens is capable of producing articulated trains with intercarriage bogies, like the Mireo in Bavaria.
The intercarriage bogies are a tried and tested solution offering the same advantages, so why venture into new bogies arrangements that seem to have quite obvious disadvantages?
What does this new structure offer that the intercarriage bogies don't?

These new tube trains look great but I think that their structure needlessly adds new constraints whereas the good old intercarriage / Jacobs bogies would have given the same results minus the new constraints.

Originality is great, but is it always the better choice?
We'll see...
In the meantime I'm eager to ride these new trains next time I'm in London.

[markdonovan]

I would like to know why the picc 73 stock can't be flipped over to the bakerloo line, i know the age difference is not that much but the difference between them is astonishing the 73 stock is far superior so why not take advantage of the situation , both stock types are single handle driven so no retraining would be necessary, if anyone knows why this cannot be done i would love to know.

[askinlad]

why do the windows have to be so small

[V-eq]

One things strikes me as odd or impractical: The grabpoles so close to the seats. Imagine all seats are taken. Then one passenger holding to that pole. Where does he stand? He could be just a foot from the pole to hold onto it. Where are his feet then? Between two of the passengers' sitting. Do they get entangled? What if he/she wants to stay more forward or back? What about the passengers who are next to him standing? They can't use that pole so they are left without something to get a hold.
I suggest to move the poles to the center or at least one foot away from the seats. This way more passengers can use it without trampling on the sitters' feet. It looks like a design that has never been tested by real passengers. Too few grabpoles! Get the train full of standees and then accelerate or brake it hard. And then talk to that human argo being tossed around.

[JP_TaVeryMuch]

2:32 Let's hope that they remember to check the doors this time. A perhaps understandable omission last time as the engineers can be forgiven for concentrating on more traditional areas such as motive power, going, stopping, the comfort and safety of the "customers", the control systems and so on.
I'm not very pleased with the careful use of the phrase
"air cooling systems" I'm pretty sure that we were presented with a glossy corporate confabulation with one of the first things heavily promoted and crowed about was the wonderful news that they'd finally cracked the problem of air conditioning on the deep tube lines.

4:10 Someone hasn't told the money man, Mr. Harvey though. Typical skulduggery, tell everyone else that it doesn't exist except for the Chief Capital Officer who can then still be tapped for it and you can pocket the difference.

I'm joking of course but it is an interesting slip of the tongue.

[JP_TaVeryMuch]

0:22 As the famous cry in das Boot has it:

"ALARM!!!"

That's what I hear whenever increase in capacity is mentioned. Funny that they never mention more seats though. Almost without fail, a 10% increase means fewer sitting because of fewer seats and more standing, err... because of fewer seats.

[johnhood]

Am not sure about the 1960s style windows, what will be the design choice in 50 years time wooden floors, still better than having old trains, what we need now is new trains on the Central line and put the 92 stock on the Bakerloo if the government stops spending hundreds of billions aboard every year.

[bigfaluda]

Another poor interior design without any overhead rails to hold onto in the door area. Everyone fighting over one central pole and others forced to balance dangerously. Also this minimises capacity.