Last run of NS DM90 "Buffel", marking the end of diesel trains by NS Dutch Railways

[Yavianice]

Today, 29 August 2018, was the final day of diesel operation at NS, with the transfer of the DM90 Buffel to the railway museum. Here is a video I made of the special occasion. Now, all trains owned by Dutch Railways are electric, as all remaining lines have been electrified or sold off to private companies.

 

 

Edited August 29, 2018 by Yavianice

[gavino200]

I like it. Is there a model of this available? 

[Kiha66]

It looks brand new, crazy how its being retired.  I like how the last run was to the museum under its own power.  Seems any museum rolling stock moves here have to be via company locomotives, UP doesn't want anyone else running on their lines.

[Suica]

These DMUs are 20 years old. But if everything is electrified now there's just no point in having them. Adding in the fact that (some) EU countries have quite strict regulations when it comes to combustion engines, it doesn't seem strange that they have to go. 

[chadbag]

4 hours ago, Kiha66 said:

It looks brand new, crazy how its being retired.  I like how the last run was to the museum under its own power.  Seems any museum rolling stock moves here have to be via company locomotives, UP doesn't want anyone else running on their lines.

 

not train related, but when I worked for DEC as a night operator, doing backups of the engineering systems, I logged into a PDP11 one Friday night and there was a system message that everyone needed to back their data up and get it off the computer, as on the following Monday the computer was off to the computer museum in Boston (or somewhere).  It went directly from being in daily use as an engineering machine to the museum.   Kind of like this train.  No sitting in a warehouse or depot or salvage yard for 20 years.

 

It does look nice.

 

 

 

Edited August 30, 2018 by chadbag

[Yavianice]

The DM'90 never really got the love it deserved, since it was constructed to replace the ancient DE1 and DE2 series, but was delivered just before the privatization of many local lines in The Netherlands. Private companies were not really interested in DM'90 because of their maintenance cost, poor fuel consumption, odd width (so it couldn't be use in some areas) and crucial lack of air-conditioning, and quickly replaced them with LINT diesel cars. Which is too bad. I think it looks great, and the train was quite comfortable in any other season but the summer. At least it had a better run-time than its electric sister, the Railhopper SM'90, which was only in use for 13 years because of its non-conform width and terrible reliability.

[kvp]

9 hours ago, Suica said:

These DMUs are 20 years old. But if everything is electrified now there's just no point in having them. Adding in the fact that (some) EU countries have quite strict regulations when it comes to combustion engines, it doesn't seem strange that they have to go. 

Actually not all lines got electrified, but the unelectrified lines got outsourced or passed to 3rd sector companies. And those companies who are still operating diesel trains didn't want to use this type for the reasons Yavianice described above. Imho LINTs or pretty much anything at least partially low floor is better for the passengers on those country lines. Afaik the mothballed sets were sold to eastern europe, except this museum set. Imho it's nice that they tought about preserving a set with such a young train.

 

10 hours ago, Kiha66 said:

It looks brand new, crazy how its being retired.  I like how the last run was to the museum under its own power.  Seems any museum rolling stock moves here have to be via company locomotives, UP doesn't want anyone else running on their lines.

Europe has a mandatory deregulated rail market. It's like how UP has to tolerate Amtrak, but with any private company. If you have the money to get the required permits, then you can use the tracks, just have to coordinate with the track owner, who has to let you through for a set usage fee. (just like with cars and highways) One side effect is that in eastern europe many museum locomotives are kept operational for (and by) MOW duties and could be regularly seen with MOW freight besides the occasonal museum excursions / rail foto tours. So as long as a train is certified to operate on mainlines and the owner has the money to run it, you can pretty much go anywhere you want with it. There are lots of small freight operators too, with 2nd or 3rd hand locomotives running cargo services, usually below the prices of larger operators and taking on jobs that are too small for the big ones to care about.

[Yavianice]

8 minutes ago, kvp said:

Afaik the mothballed sets were sold to eastern europe, except this museum set. Imho it's nice that they tought about preserving a set with such a young train.

DM'90 were supposed to be sold to Romania FeroTrans, but severe financial issues makes this very unlikely. My bet is that the DM'90 will sit and rot away, and eventually scrapped. A sad ending.

[Densha]

On 8/30/2018 at 1:21 PM, kvp said:

Europe has a mandatory deregulated rail market. It's like how UP has to tolerate Amtrak, but with any private company. If you have the money to get the required permits, then you can use the tracks, just have to coordinate with the track owner, who has to let you through for a set usage fee. (just like with cars and highways) One side effect is that in eastern europe many museum locomotives are kept operational for (and by) MOW duties and could be regularly seen with MOW freight besides the occasonal museum excursions / rail foto tours. So as long as a train is certified to operate on mainlines and the owner has the money to run it, you can pretty much go anywhere you want with it. There are lots of small freight operators too, with 2nd or 3rd hand locomotives running cargo services, usually below the prices of larger operators and taking on jobs that are too small for the big ones to care about.

Nope. Although deregulation is 'suggested' by the EU, countries still can decide on deregulation themselves. Just look at Belgium not allowing any public transport operators except for the four big government-owned operators. In the Netherlands this has never been mandatory either, but some politicians with neo-liberal views in the 90s decided to present this EU deregulation suggestion as mandatory. This in order to reach their personal political goals. In the end this was one of the main causes of trouble the Dutch railway network has known since. The infrastructure and rail operator departments of the Dutch railways were forcibly torn apart, which led to miscommunication and inefficiency. The Fyra disaster was also largely to blame by this policy.

 

Also note that you cannot just run a passenger train in the Netherlands without having won a public tender. This to prevent tax-paid trains from getting competition from open-access companies. As for the Netherlands, only international passenger trains and all freight trains are exempt of public tenders.

[kvp]

7 hours ago, Densha said:

Nope. Although deregulation is 'suggested' by the EU, countries still can decide on deregulation themselves.

Yes and not quite. The scheduled passenger train market might remain closed, but freight and private rail access is open. This means allowing private trains and railtour operators with non scheduled trains onto the tracks. The only way to block this is by not giving out track certification due to missing safety system certifications. Often circumvented by adding a certified 3rd party locomotive in front of the train. The new safety system standard was designed to eliminate this but adoption is slow and many times blocked by national rail companies. (just like full deregulation and the european central air traffic control in the aviation industry) As for the Netherlands, a special party train has been running from the Netherland to Hungary for the yearly Sziget festival. The cars were from Euro-Express and L&W with mixed power (obb/mav/etc.). So it seems as long you got the money, you can run your own trains pretty much all over Europe. The Simplon Orient Express company has even been doing this with scheduled rail cruise trains on multiple routes. (even did it once in Japan many years ago)

[Densha]

Sorry, but the examples you give are not relevant. The train to Sziget and the Orient Express are international trains, which are as I already said exempt from public tenders all over the European Union.

 

The only domestic open-access passenger trains in the Netherlands are special runs such as steam tours and the dinner train. The former are exempt because they are non-commercial runs, and the latter because they do not compete with existing tax-paid passenger trains. The situation may be different in other countries, but other domestic passenger trains, be it regional or long distance, are not open-access in the Netherlands. Period.