I Tried Sweden's Most HATED Long-Distance Train - And It Surprised Me
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- Опубликовано: 28 сен 2024
- While I often speak positively about SJ’s fleet, especially their X2000 trains and classic loco-hauled intercity services, there is one lesser-known long-distance train that travelers in Sweden try to avoid. The SJ X40, part of the Alstom Coradia fleet, has been criticized for its poor comfort and reliability. In today’s video, we’ll see just how bad these trains really are.
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Train type: SJ X40
Route: Ljusdal - Uppsala - Stockholm - Linköping
Train: SJ Intercity 265
Distance: 70km
Journey time: 36m
Average speed: 117 km/h
Price: 15 € / 165 SEK but please dont buy first.
3:03 since comeone was occupying my reserved window sear ...
THE KICK HIM OFF DUDE!!!
On some regions you can travel on the X40 using the regions own public transport system. Which means you can't/don't reserve a seat if you travel with that system however if you have a reserved seat and someone is using that seat they have to move when asked to.
Simon, you are spot on as usual The X 40 is not good at all. I would not ride it från Stockholm to Gothenburg. It's over 5 hours... And not comfortable at all. I would rather go on the intercity older trains with Rc6 🚂 than the X40. As always a very trainfilm. You're welcome back in the summer to Lenna katten... The steam train from Uppsala 😎🚂👍
I never thought negatively about them. I've always thought they had good AC and comfortable seats. I didn't know people disliked them
if you reserved it you need to tell the persoon off
I used to ride X40 between Stockholm and Norrköping (ca 75 min) a lot when it was a fairly new model. It was a good choice back then and much cheaper compared to X2000. Today, the Stadler KISS trains (DOSTO) are a much better option.
Honestly, the X40 is realistically only built for up to 2 hour journeys. I rode one from Stockholm to Nyköping and it was fine. But I feel like for journeys over 2 hours, the seats need a major revision.
yeah, and at least on the gothenburg-stockholm route they're clearly not intended for people to ride end to end, the service is even called "regional"!
It's basically a series of commuter train routes chained together and ran with the same vehicles.
I ride them every now and then in the gothenburg area, and for that they're perfectly okay, the only real complaint i have is that they need to be longer to fit more passengers.
SJ has bought new regional trains from CAF which most likely will replace the X40 on the long journes like Ljusdal-Linköping and Stockholm-Västerås-Göteborg in a few years
To be fair, the X40 is designed for regional services with frequent stops and low passenger numbers. However there are a few problems with this, one being that we don’t have all too many routes that isn’t already being covered by the regions on their own - especially since the Mälardalen regions began with Mälartåg.
Another problem is that the few routes where this is applicable mostly have uneven passenger numbers. As an example, the route that you ran with (Ljusdal-Linköping) consists of one route with few passengers (Ljusdal-Gävle), two routes with medium/high amount of passengers (Gävle-Uppsala and Stockholm-Linköping) and one route with more than a high amount of passengers (Uppsala-Stockholm). This means that the train isn’t dimensioned well neither way, and fills a lot of purposes quite badly, maybe with the exception of Ljusdal-Gävle on this particular route. The same could be said about the X40 Stockholm-Göteborg route, it could be broken into many pieces which differs quite a lot with levels of ridership. These routes would probably be better of with Rc6 trains, where they could couple and uncouple wagons depending on the amount of travelers, or cutting the routes into smaller pieces. The X40 could possibly work Ljusdal-Uppsala, but not the last stretch to Stockholm (although it would be quite weird to terminate from the north in Uppsala, when Stockholm has an abundance of north-facing terminal tracks and is not even an hour away).
So to sum up my thoughts, the X40 just doesn’t fit any purpose to SJ of today. When they were ordered, SJ had a lot of minor routes that they would fit, but since they lost the responsibility (as well as the competition) to regional competitors, these are a misfit wherever they run. Not bad, but there are better kinds of trains in SJs fleet that would fit these routes better than the X40 does.
The ticketing system could have 0 capacity between Stockholm and Upsala to reserve these X40 train to only tickets where one end point is beyond Upsalla in north or some point south of Stockholm. This avoids this train being used as "commuter" Between Upsalla and Stockholm.
I think train operators try to avoid shunting operations as much as they can since it requires more manpower and time at the station where equipment is coupled/uncoupled. And if you had 2 units couples between Stockholm and Upsalla, and only one continued north of Upsalla, there is the issue of ensuring any passenger going north of Upsalla would board in the first unit and all those going to Upsalla would board the second unit.
Another great but short video Simon
Train look beautiful even though it's a product of Alstom
>Alstom
Ah yeah that explains it.
Excellent video
I hope the new civitys SJ are ordering, complimenting the x40 and replacing the rest of the rc6:s will be better than this
At least, I appreciate the compartement doors, it's what I really miss on the German IC2. (Different to others, I kind of like the German IC2, especially as the head part of the seats is not so strongly shaped as the one on the ICE4 seats. I had the direct comparison just yesterday, when I needed to catch some sleep.)
But I don't get, why you didn't complain about the person on your reserved seat or did you expect that they would still sit next to you and hinder filming?
What you expect from Alstom - company, where right hand doesn't know what left is doing... You swedes sometimes doing strange decisions - buying stuff from the dodgy companies for little bit cheapper price initially, then you pay twice. This is relevant for transportation and energy sectors.
nothing new here, many things have been delayed due to our probably unique "offentlig upphandling" which forces the companies to accept whatever company that made the lowest bid
When ordered the X40 was a commuter train. Perhaps this explains everything. They are now in the process of being refurbished, one would imagine to have an interior more in keeping with a long distance train. I have not ridden the X40 but my son has and he seemed to be ok with the interior. He thought the journey time from Göteborg to Stockholm was a bit excessive, though.
I like the X40, the seats are comfortable and the interior overall it’s pretty neat.
The trains actually had vending machines installed but later they were removed due to failures caused by the shaking when reaching high speeds.
From december this year SJ will cancel the commuter service between Stockholm and Uppsala due to their unstable economy. Instead Mälartåg will run their trains between Stockholm and Uppsala with high frequency. Meaning that SJ will have more X40 trains and older InterCity trains in the depot.
But would you pay for the first class product, and if so why?
SJ way of repairing something is to remove it completely
The X40 is not used that much to Uppsala, just a few trains per day - but those trains are also used at Mälarbanan in the morning rush, so there'll not be more X40 in depot. Maybe even less, as they will be modernized in Finland, and two sets were in an accident earlier this week.
The driver's cabin is tiny in the X40. It makes The X60 family's driver's cabin look like a banquet hall.
Both X40 and X60 are from Alstom.
Short question. How do you use the map, paint out the route and the distance.
Hälsningar från Sverige
They are getting a refurb and the first class will be improved, I'm not sure how much though.
What is the "reliability issues"? There was some problems when these trains were new, but now these trains usually have a low amount of stopping errors, compared to the X2000, where a few trains every month have to be evacuated along the line due to the reliability issues.
But yes, 1st class is not worth it on those trains, but when you're a member of SJ Prio, and you're traveling from an station with Pressbyrån, you'll be offered one cup of hot drink, and if your travel time is more than 75 or if it's 90 minutes and departure before 9 o'clock, you'll get an breakfast menu from Pressbyrån as well. And as always, you get access to 1st class lounge in Stockholm or Gothenburg.
The seats look like something that would be in Finland lol! Also love your videos! ❤
I traveled on the X40 on the distance Gävle to Stockholm, and not having food onboard + most of the toilets broken or closed were miles worse compared to their X55 trains, which had at least some food serving
Had to look it up. This is a Coradia type of train, of true Alstom heritage as opposed to ABB/AdTranz/Bombardier lineage. Am curious on why it is still unreliable so many years after its introduction.
When your video started, I looked up the distance between Uppsala and Stockholm and tought : they call that long distance? 🙂
Since these are 2-3 car units, I can understand not allocating a full car to a café. However, back in the days, VIA rail (canada) could fit a small food place in an Budd RDC (DMU from the 1950s) and still have plenty of seats in the rest of the DMU. It was just a kiosk where you ordered food and you would bring it back to your seat. (VIA has eliminated those of course, and provides trolley service across the train now - no hot meals possible - except in business class where the galleys are still operational).
Question: does first class ticket grant you access to lounges at departing/arriving stations? Curious on why they bother offering such tickets on those trains. One possibility is a problem similar to aviation where you book a $10,000 first class trans atlantic ticket with a suite, shower, massage, 10 course meal etc, and then transfer to a regional jet that has coach only and very tight seat pitch. Is it possible this first is offered for similar connection where person has a true first class experience from say Mälmo to Stockholm and then the fake "first class" ticket to Upsalla?
Yeah. It looks terrible, it sounds terrible and it replaced Rc6; enough reasons right 😅?
Very odd - I couldn't tell the difference between 1st and 2nd class at all! And such an awful layout with seats scattered around / steps and doors everywhere. I really would NOT fancy a long trip in one of the seats that faces inwards opposite the toilets! How can anyone think that they might be a good idea?
Well its cheap atleast and gets the job done not in the best way sadly
6/10
Looks gorgeous inside, and solidly engineered, though lack of catering does seem a bit odd. 👍
I often travel on these from Linköping to Stockholm and I quite like them for that purpose. They are generally less crowded than the high speed trains and are less affected by delays since they start in Linköping and are therefore unaffected by issues further south. They are probably a less reliable on the same trip in the other direction tough. In addition they are slightly cheaper than the high speed train and only a little bit slower.
There used to be 2 vending machines onboard the train but they were removed instead of getting repaired
Went on it a few times, agree that it's sort of a strange layout. Really enjoyed the video, love from Uppsala!
Episk video!
Very good x40 trian
No
The X40 is the worst SJ train model! No bistro, no kiosk. You can't walk in to another car in the train, it is so little space above your seat that your bag can't be placed on the little shelf. It's a claustrophobic feeling overall! Bad, bad train 🤬
im not sure if you remember me from my grate video🫵🏻😊👍🏻 comments cuz i forgot about your channel😅 but in my opinion that train is not grate looking but as usual grate video🫵🏻😍👍🏻