Today, June 1, 2016, I took the train as usual from OV-Vitkovice to Cesky Tesin, scheduled departure at 15:29 and arrival at 16:11. We were already standing still in Vitkovice, because we almost always wait there for the train from OV-Kuncice, which gives way to trains in the opposite direction. There is a closure between Kuncice and Vitkovice, they are building some crazy bridge there or something like that.
Between Albrechtice and Chotebuz, as we were crossing a single-track bridge, strange noises came from under the bogie. In Chotebuz, while the train was standing, they turned into a quiet humming, as if the traction motors were cooling down, but we still got moving again, though not for long. I thought to myself: so that is why it is called CityEleFANt. You could feel that the train was only rolling on momentum, until it finally braked to a stop. Some system codes appeared on the passenger information display, but they disappeared after a moment. I could have taken a picture of them, but I did not want to snap photos like a madman when the train was packed to bursting.
So I went to the door, where there is that 2-line display, and there were 3 people there. One was an old grandpa, a Black man, who spoke lovely Czech. I found that out when I offered him a seat, telling him I had left a whole set of four seats free. He politely declined, saying he would manage standing. Then there was someone I had already seen at the station in Tesin. I do not know whether he was just waiting there or whether he is some railway enthusiast or an outright trainspotter, but he looked very familiar and he also knew a lot about trains and about how the railway works in general.
To give him some name, let us call him Dave. And then there was a guy who told us that the next train coming from Havirov would pick us up. He had this information from a friend who was on the train behind us. When I talk about him, I will call him Michal. We were supposed to leave Chotebuz at 16:05, and the next train from our direction was due to leave the same stop at 16:34. The conductor walked through the train announcing that “the train is broken because of the storm“, and when people asked her “I suppose there will not be any replacement bus service, right?“, she replied that there would not, because the company had locked all the doors. There was electricity, the doors between the cars worked normally, the lights were on and so on, only the door-open button was quite red.
When she reached the end of the train, Dave started telling her about the bangs under the bogie, and she promised to pass it on. Meanwhile they also tried switching off all the circuits in the train and restarting the whole system:
That did not help at all. The train that was supposed to pick us up was not due for another 20 minutes, so he went to take a look at how the train looked from the outside, but since those double-deckers ride almost right above the rails, he could not see anything and walked off along the track.
In that time, almost countless trains passed by us, so why did we have to be stuck here?! He was gone for a very long time. Altogether we stood there for an hour, because the extra train behind us was, of course, also a 460, which they routed onto the side track, and only the following CityElefant from Bohumin, proudly bearing the name “Hanicka” (also known as “Trinec“, the one the mayor of Trinec “begged for”, which sealed the gradual retirement of the blue boxes in favor of something very futuristic, when you looked at the two machines side by side), rushed to our rescue.
For me it was a “blessing in disguise“. I could not wait to get off, I had a dentist appointment today, after 1 month of waiting.
We had to wait for a different train with a fully automatic coupler. The 460 does not have one; normally the cars are coupled by people who do nothing but this. The 471 has the Scharfenberg type ( https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sp%C5%99%C3%A1hlo_Scharfenberg ), which is used by many manufacturers of rail vehicles, it is nothing niche. Every unit that provides traction and braking force has to communicate with the leading one, in case the leading unit needs to react to something; someone has to keep watch over what is happening ahead of us, and without an instant connection that would not be possible.
, or here the same thing from the ice age, when it truly earned its nickname Glacier Citak:
Our imprisonment was drawing to a happy end. The head of our train arrived. Pretty funny when the driver is the one being carried while the passengers sit :D. The gates of the train opened, we rolled back a few centimeters as he released the brake, and off we raced down the home stretch. Dave just hissed that if they did not set the switches correctly in Tesin, our train would pass and the second one would derail. The switches have to be changed right after the train passes, there is nothing to wait for. I was surprised by how powerful the motors of that machine are. The “3 little cars” alone weigh over 155 tons (the so-called service weight). If everyone weighed 65 kg and there were 400 people in the 2 trains (the unit has 310 seats in total), it would add up to 336 tons, and yet it ran like a dream, technically speaking on one motor :).
Unfortunately I did not take a picture in Tesin, because my brother was constantly bombarding me with texts like “So are you f*cking coming today or not?” xD. As a pair we were braking for quite a long time, the driver was braking with his eyes too. In the better case we would have ended up getting off onto the tracks after all xD, in the worse case we would have made the news with a full-blown Paroubek. As I was disappearing into the underpass, the station announcement reached my ears: “the train is delayed due to a vehicle stuck on the track” xD. I do not know exactly how it affected the other trains, but idos just silently nodded along:
PS: The video is a bit off topic, but people are definitely not stingy with praise xD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8k1Y1vPxz0 We will not forget :'( xD: https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNgk06cC5h_6-lHyQPUa7wa7iqfDgDQwH7pSqrDsFriKsT1FRFC7eIh6RF4dV_3wQ?key=SDNuT245UWVPYnJPQkljV1k4cHFGU1dTX1QwSTVR
PS: 2 days later, on June 3, unit 471 054 “Petra” is already racing the wind and lightning, spotted in OV-Vitkovice :).