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the rail engineer • February 2015
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costof failure
PHOTO: PROSE
May 2009 as otherwise the contract would be cancelled. This ultimatum was met, following which DSB announced it had reached an agreement with AnsaldoBreda on the delivery of the remaining trains. The final delivery date was to be extended to 2012, AnsaldoBreda would drop all further development, and all subsequent train sets would be identical to the then-current test train. Any future upgrades would be performed by DSB and AnsaldoBreda was to pay DSB compensation of 2 billion kroner. Together with previously paid compensation fees, this meant that half the original value of the contract was refunded. Also, for what seems to be a bizarre reason, the Danish IC4 fleet remains one train short. The missing set does exist, however. It can even be seen on Google Earth at its current resting place in Tripoli, Libya (at 32.828791°N 13.111563°E). AnsaldoBreda and the then Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi gifted the train in 2009 to Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to mark the fortieth anniversary of his rise to power! An ambitious scheme to construct standard gauge lines in Libya had been started in 2008, but the project stalled because of the 2011 civil war leaving the IC4 train with nowhere to go.
Crack in the manifold between the turbocharger and the rear cylinder.
PROSE report Now an independent report produced by Swiss rolling stock engineering company PROSE Ltd, in association with Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) and Enotrac, has assessed whether it is worthwhile for DSB to continue spending resources on IC4, given the expected 15-year operating life of the trains. It concludes that DSB can hit its target of having 74 of the IC4 trains in service by 2019, with a reliability figure of 20,000km between failures. The main functions that need to be improved are as follows: »» The IC4 sets can’t work in tandem to provide the required train capacity, because the coupling system doesn’t work properly. »» The brake blending and wheels slide protection systems are deficient, meaning that a speed restriction has been imposed on the entire fleet.
»» Cracking has been found in axle box housings. »» The power packs have several integration problems and component defects which have reduced the availability of the train sets.
Coupler The Prose report highlights several problems associated with the Dellner inter-unit coupler system. There is no suggestion within the report that Dellner Couplers itself has been at fault; rather it was the way in which the train manufacturer incorporated the Dellner coupler system into the overall design concept, and especially the train computer and monitoring system. Deployment of the IC4 trains on their intended long distance routes, e.g. Copenhagen-Aalborg, has been hampered because these services require 8-car units at peak times. The 4-coach IC4 trains have therefore tended to be used on regional services, for which they are unsuited.