This Frecciarossa High Speed Train Was Almost SCRAPPED After JUST 39 DAYS!
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- Опубликовано: 15 июн 2023
- I’ll be looking at Trenitalia’s high speed ETR 700 today, which is better known as the infamous V250 “Fyra” train ordered for cross border services between Belgium and The Netherlands, however severe technical issues caused it to lose its operating license after only 39 days in service… and re-entered service in 2019 operating Trenitalia services across Italy. So what are these trains like? Find out in this video!
Journey details:
Date of Travel - March 2023
Operator - Frecciarossa (FS Trenitalia)
Train Type - ETR 700/V250
Origin - Milano Centrale
Destination - Venezia St Lucia
Price - €27.90/£25.45 (“Special Arrows” fare, including €2 seat reservation fee)
Duration - 2 hours, 25 minutes
Thanks for watching and I hope you enjoyed the video!
Music from EpidemicSound and is used under license.
A massive thanks to the following for their contributions to this video:
@Trainlagged - check out his channel for some awesome content!
Tim Boric - check out his Flickr page here for some amazing photography: flickr.com/photos/tim_boric/
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Link to the Trenitalia menu: Listino FRECCIABistro FRECCIAROSSA1000 (trenitalia.com)
#etr700 #fyra #frecciarossa #milan #venice #tripreport #trenitalia #vlog #italy
It was not a matter of NS persevering. The train's type approval was revoked by the government for safety reasons. You mentioned the electrical problems, fire and the door falling out. I also remember that pieces of ice pierced the floor at 200 km/h and Ansaldo Breda stating that it was never tested for cold climates. That was both Ansaldo's and the NS's fault. But nevertheless, the train was deemed by the government "unfit for purpose" and was forbidden to travel with passengers again.
You forgot to mention that the NMBS Belgian state railways pulled the plug imediatly on the entire V250 class after vital parts fell of several units and people got wounded.
Ah yes I also remember 1 of AnsaldoBreda other defences for this,short lived but still really, and I quote “Everyone know live comes to a still in the low-countries (Be & Nl) so we designed the trains for that”
Departed Milan central station this past January for a trip to Florence. We used Italo and paid a little extra for executive class with lounge access. The lounge access was worth the extra cost. Modern train stations have few places to sit. They won't want you arriving early. The issue is check-out and check-in times for visitors. If I get to my destination too early, I can't check in yet. In Milan the club lounged are at an upper level accessible via elevator (good as my wife has mobility issues). they have wall to wall glass over-looking the platforms. Just excellent. For a train nerd, it was heaven. Drinks and snacks were still being handed out by a staff member as it was still the tail end of COVID times. The signage in the station was excellent and we had zero issues making a direct line to the lounge. Frecciarossa has a similar lounge, but I don't have experience with them. I'm sure it is equally nice. the cost of high speed rail in Italy is just amazing. So affordable. I'm sure I'd be perfectly comfortable in 2nd class seats, but when you have someone with mobility issues and extra equipment to lug around having fewer people per rail car is helpful. The extra $100 on a big European trip wasn't going to "break the bank" so might as well enjoy some extra comfort.
Those ETR700's are just stunning in Freciarossa livery!!!!
That is: after completely rebuilding the trains. Some of the problems: electrical wiring harnesses differed from train to train... furthermore all kind of small differences, missing screws! etc etc.
@@JaapGinder Not completely rebuilted, Trenianalia Update the SCMT system, engaged Giugiaro architetture for studying a new color scheme, changed some rusted connector (after 5 years to the open). Added the video PIS and the fire fighting systems. The only major change from the original train is the Bistrot area (it was absent in the original version). For the rest they applied the same modifications the same established for the Dutch version (but which the Dutch did not give time to do).
Honestly, I like them! And I find the seats supportive and comfy, and I've done 7 hours in one 🙂 Great video though mate!
I would just like to correct a tiny mistake (I used to be a Venetian, but I have been a Londoner for longer than 30 years). The road part of the "Ponte della Liberta' " was opened in 1933; the original railway bridge was built by the Austrians in 1866.
Evrey duchts and belgum train fan get nichtmares everytime we are hearing the name fyra
but in Italy they work great!
@@intersezioni Ha ha! If you want to die onboard that piece of crap, do so, please!
@@intersezioni because there is now snow and freezing conditions. 😉
@@JaapGinder Eh..?! .....The trains work perfectly.
Belgium and Holland...Two insignificant countries that allow themselves to criticize Italy. Do you have aeronautical industries? NO...Do you have naval industries? NO....Do you have automotive industries? NO ! The only thing you have are the "coffeeshops" and the Islamic illegal immigrants who from day to day carry out attacks in your cities! Ahahahahaha....
The Fyra service started in 2009! Also these ETR700's look stunning in the frecciarossa livery.
While the service started in 2009, it was with the old push/pull trainsets. The V250 didn't start service until the end of 2012
@@Hans-gb4mv so the Valleilijn services in the Netherlands didn't start until they got their new trains? That sounds dumb man. The services just started in 2009 it isn't nothing more or less.
Thank you for the final flim clip, showing that on arrival you come out of Venice St Lucia straight into the city with the Grand Canal in front of you. The facades on the south side opposite are an excellent introduction to the city.
I honestly think politics play a huge role here. Belgium did not want the dutch high speed line in the first place (and made the netherlands pay all of the costs).
It is a bit suspicious that in the same year Belgium cancelled the fyra after two weeks, yet gave siemens years to fix the issues with the hle 18 locomotive series.
The fyra had a lot of issues, (upgrading a regional 160km/h train to do 250 was a stupid idea) but it passed all of the test to be allowed on tracks and belgium very quickly jumped on the chance to cancel it if you ask me. (especially considering how protective belgium is in protecting the nmbs).
Or if you consider that the thalys is a french belgium company and now the fastest option by far.
I agree, but Thalys is a brand of SNCF, Belgium Rail, DB and NS.
On 28 January 1993, the French railway company SNCF, the Belgian NMBS, the Dutch NS and the German Deutsche Bundesbahn (which would merge into the DB in 1994) signed an agreement to jointly operate these connections under the Thalys brand.
@@JaapGinder true true, but only the nscf and nscb (belgium rail) own thalys, ns and db are strategic partners/kept at a distance if not needed.
If ns was only a strategic partner because it had its own high speed ambitions (which died with fyra) or that the ns gained those high speed ambitions because they felt being kept out, I dont know (either one could be true)
I should add that now the ns and nscb are working on adding a third train between brussels and amsterdam, which will skip most stops and only be slightly slower than the thalys, using the new trains the ns bought. While the nscb will use loco hauled trains to take over the current ic brussels route untill Rotterdam (and tests with these locs in the netherlands are already being done).
A good development if you ask me, since the thalys and ic brussels are always filled to the brim, and this would bring much needed extra capacity.
@@JaapGinderNS does not have a stake in Thaly ! Only sncf and nmbs have . DB did have 10% but released it .
Their interests in Thalys determins their position on Fyra. They value Thalys more than Fyra . Similar with IC Direct A'dam-Bruzz . If IC Direct would only stop in Schiphol , R'dsm and Antwerp it would be only marginally sloerr than Thalys , and be a competitir. Therefore they enforced that icdirect stops at more stations ...and thus protect Thalys revenues ..
It was losing parts and catching fire. Siemens trains weren't losing parts and catching fire.
It was a train that was way too cheap, no manufacturer could have offered it for this price. The fact that it took them multiple years to fix them up after they came back to Italy highlights this.
I think the reason Ansaldo got only a few weeks was that the media burned the train to the ground. It was already delayed by four(!) years, and then started losing parts, etc. Teething problems are okay, such as we now see with the ICNG, but them causing safety issues is not ok.
Also, apparently Ansalsobreda did weird things with the certification, which means that likely the trains should not have been certified for use (when they were put into use in the Netherlands/Belgium).
Bravo! What a fab trip.
Wonderful!
TWO VIDEOS IN AS MANY DAYS! HELL YEAH!
Nice, BRAVO & LIKE
As a dutchmen myself i'm laughing my ass of to the fact that not even the toilets were chalked in grafiti😂
No i haven't rode it, the fyra had so many problems and still weren't even fit for service after that and the dutch did not want a new train in the first place, the prime minister and other members of the dutch government begged to differ. Funnily enough the same prime minister has now dropped the dutch second room and thus we can go vote again soon... yeah the prime minister somewhat bended the rules so he could get a chance of getting re-elected for now like 6 or 7 terms(on normal occasions it's limited to two full terms)
even with the new intercity train ordered by alstom the dutch railway company had problems, software and design problems, which delayed their delivery by several years.
The question is: is the Dutch railway company unlucky or incompetent?
That's not uncommon for any new train design. The big difference is in how the issues are being handled.
@@Hans-gb4mv you are right, in italy they fixed it with fyra in netherlands they still have problems with every train they buy
@@attenzioneallontanarsidall7940 Show me any train that, when first introduced, runs trouble free. You don't find those. All of them have issues. What matters is that you have a viable plan and a workable time frame to fix those issues.
But lets compare the Fyra and the new ICNG in the Netherlands. In 2004, the contract was awarded to AnsaldoBreda to build the Fyra sets, set to be introduced in 2007 (a year agreed upon with the manufacturer, the first trainset didn't leave the factory until 2009 and finally entered service in 2012 while the plug on the project was pulled in 2013, 9 years after signing the contract and still no viable train. In 2017 Trenitalia purchased the 19 sets and started the refurb, taking another 2 years before the train could finally enter passenger service. That's 11 years of work to get the trains in a state where they could operate in a somewhat reliable fashion.
The ICNG contract was awarded in 2016 with the aim to get them into service in 2021. Issues caused a delay but the trains entered service in 2023, 2 years after the initial scheduled date and 7 years after awarding the contract.
And it is not up to the train operator to fix any issues, it is up to the manufacturer. And an Italian manufacturer needed 11 years to get the trains into operation, The French manufacturer needed 7.
Cheap and incompetent
Seems someone is still salty their trains were deemed to be to dangerous for service in the Netherlands and Belgium. Heck... even now... after so many years, they are not up to par with the majority of HS in Europe. Yes, every train has its issues, but instead of fixing those issues AnsaldoBreda choose to bitch and moan instead of fixing them.
I was the on duty train manager on the very first revenue service of these trains in August 2012. It was a Wednesday and and it was a “surprise” run for those waiting at the station for the unit to show up rather then the loco hauled stock. Naturally I was told to keep it quiet, so I did mention some bits and bobs on several rail enthusiast forums… lay the oieces together and finally apart from a few friends I contacted directly some did manage to get the hints and were on board the first service to Rotterdam. What the first passengers didn’t knew was we had an early start that morning with a test run to Breda and back where we discoverd several faults on the lighting armatures which just fell out of the ceiling on the seats as the build quality was atrocious and we were all given Philip’s screwdrivers to quickly fasten the worst parts of the train. In the end I managed getting into Brussels three times with these trains. Sadly I was never lucky on my return journey’s as by the third day in a row I got stranded and had to be dragged away by a diesel locomotive. Fortunately I had my wife and a few friends with me and the ambience among the passengers was great. We all knew what this meant and next day at the office I presented my boss the train keys and told him to do it himself cause I’ve had enough. Few days later it started snowing and my wife bought a bottle of champagne. Soon after I got home working the loco hauled stock and seeing several colleagues in tears over their experience that day with the V250 news broke the safety license of the units was revoked. I have never celebrated the withdrawal of a fleet type ecver since, but we heaved our glasses and drank on never setting foot on these awful trains ever again.
I loved the homage to GWR and the class 800s. The combination of mediocre trains and poor customer service is unbeatable!
Sounds like I should give em a try some day
I like your narrating voice ;)
Ansaldo-Breda, already had a tarnished reputation, in the mid '00's, by having the trains ordered by the DSB completly rebuilt by Bombardier in Randers, fresh out of Italy. And their helicopters couldn't withstand the salty conditions of the Dutch caribbean Islands.
the new Dutch intercity trains faulty? And these new German trains for hydrogen RMVs?
on the other hand, no one remembers Alstom's numerous and recurring problems.
From Die WELT:
"Since December 2022, the 27 trains should have been gradually put into operation but - writes Welt - Alstom was initially only able to deliver 6 trains due to some bottlenecks in production and of these, 4 to 5 experienced problems so large that it cannot be used".
Going into specifics, "there were problems with refuelling, with the software and with the injection pump. At the beginning, only one train could be used, a few days later there were two, and then five in February. However, 11 trains are needed for respecting the timetable of the selected section.
Since the previously used diesel locomotives have meanwhile been sold by RMV, the rail traffic has come to a standstill for the time being."
The railway company Start Deutschland GmbH, which now operates the line, "was completely overwhelmed and had to contend with staff shortages and IT problems. This made the start-up of the world's largest fleet of fuel cell trains a real disaster".
Meanwhile, "Alstom has leased diesel locomotives from other railway companies and RMV offers buses as a replacement for trains.
But even after 5 months many convoys are still canceled or delayed".
"In addition to the unreliable technology, there is also the fact that many employees have called in sick due to the additional workload of the last few months.
A dozen train drivers have already quit. ecc.....
from driver perspective, it's fun to drive !! ;)
8:04 ...and INSIDE the personal bin is your knee, slamming into the sharp edge every time you barely move
Can u do the new tyne and wear metros trains in Newcastle when the new trains come out
Fun fact, the line actually gets up to 220kph between Padua and Mestre
The Fyre Festival train...😂
I think the winter at the time had a lot to do with it. It exacerbated the flaws the train already had. It can also explain why the train works satisfactory in Italy. But both parties can be blamed for not taking this into consideration. I mean, it's getting rarer nowadays, but it can be cold in winter in Holland. It should have been part of the requirements.
Are ETR equipment assigned to particular routes in Italy? Seems like some trains have a higher top speed than others
Etr means onli rapid elettric train ( elettro treno rapido), almost all elettric train whit blocked composition are ETR, the TGV is considered an ETR alo the shinkansen.
When will you add subtitles to your videos?
Classic Ansaldo Breda, though in much better shape than I'd expect given the previous rolling stock from them Ive ridden. If you wanna hear another story of scandalous trains by this company just look at the IC4 trains for DSB in Denmark. That might be an even crazier roller coaster ride, with one of their units even being stolen from DSB by Ansaldo Breda and the Italian government and donated to Libyan dictator Ghadaffi as his own private train. That unit is still in Libya to this day btw.
Also NS definitely should not have perservered with the Fyra. DSB tried perservering with the IC4's and it has been an absolute disaster that went on for over a decade, costing the government billions and causing awful experiences for the train riding passengers, and forcing cuts elsewhere on the service since funds were needed, at first to try and fix the IC4's and later on to just keep them running until we can replace them. DSB is now working on retiring all their units as soon as possible and have found a buyer in Romania for them. NS did the right thing ditching these Ansaldo disasters as early as they did.
A name that NS absolutely does NOT want to hear
Used it on a Bolzano to Milano service recently. The standard class interior looked cheap. All plastic.
Come li volevi in radica?
Tu non devi essere molto intelligente!
I don´t like the looks of it, I don´t like the airline style seating. Why must modern trains nearly always look ugly and be uncomfortable and noisy inside, when full?
Biggest and most expensive mistake NS ever made.
Not their biggest, nor their most expensive.
@@Hans-gb4mv OK, you probebly mean the HSL exploitation.
Community Transit of Washington buying buses be like:
Washington has its own experience with AnsaldoBreda, in 1991 they purchased 100 railcars from the 4000 series. Had several issues with doors opening while the vehicle was in motion and discovered an issue in 2016 that the trams were displaying an incorrect maximum allowed speed when operating in fully manual mode which was the required mode since 2009.
it actually lost it's Belgian operating licence 2 or 3 days before losing the Dutch one
and now is hitachi rail , is much better
If you call that a train, then it's about time you visited a fair my friend
Milano centrale is one of the best works done of the 1930s Italy president
No it’s not. It’s a horrible fascist building designed to make you feel insignificant. I’ll take a St. Pancras, Waterloo or Gare du Nord 10 out of 10 times as better stations
@@MrJimheeren I did not say it was good but a good work for the fascist president
@@MrJimheeren Fascism was GREAT....U.E. is SHIT ! 💩
Agree, when I visited Milan I really liked the architecture of the station
@@MrJimheeren It'horrible because made during the fascist period. Cool
Whatever people say and think there's only one FACT: Trenitalia knows how to run trains, both Belgium and the Netherlands don't. One is a European company with high speed services in multiple relevant countries (UK, Spain, Italy and France). The others are little regional train companies. That's it.
Trenitalia operate also in Greece with Hellenic Train
@@paulgenta4819 True that, the greek national railway company is fully owned by Trenitalia.
And yet, it was the responsibility of an Italian company to build, test and deliver these trains. They delivered half of what was ordered and none of them worked without issues. Why would it be the train operator's job to fix the issues that the manufacturer introduces? Why would fires in the electronics or a door falling of a brand new train be the fault of the operator, isn't that just due to bad design? Who designed the high speed trains that Trenitalia operates? Aren't those mostly designed by companies like Alstom (French) and Bombardier (Canadian) with some units build in Italy?
@@Hans-gb4mv First of all, the ETR 1000 is widely known to be the one of the best (if not the best) between the European high speed trains, videos can testify that. The ETR 1000 of Iryo as well as the ones operated in Italy and France were entirely built in the Hitachi Rail Italy (Former Ansaldo Breda) plant of Pistoia, Tuscany. When you say "some were built" in Italy you demonstrate you are ignoring and omitting the truth. 90% of the trains that are currently running in Italy (being regional or high speed) are built there.
Secondly, the ETR 700 are now running with Trenitalia and have anything of these issues. I guess Trenitalia known how to use them and someone else did not.
@@jacopomainoldi9025 let's look at that ETR1000, because yes, the final assembly of those trains took place in Pistoia, but you are leaving out one small, key detail. Who did the technical design of that train? And where were most of those parts manufactured up until 2021? Do you even know what the original name of the project that became the ETR1000 was?
Yes, the 1000 is part of Bombardier's Zefiro platform and entered the bid with Trenitalia under the name Zefiro 300. Most of the technological underpinning of the train comes from Bombardier (Alstom these days) while AnsaldoBreda primarily did the interior and exterior design. But the first five sets were built by Bombardier, the propulsion, electronics, bogies also all came from Bombardier and it was Bombardier that was responsible for the commisioning, testing and getting the train approved.
But sure, call it a 100% Italian train if it makes you feel better because final assembly of most trainsets was done in Italy.
And the ETR700 ... well, after trying to get a train certified for 11+ years, I can only hope it actually runs. And no, those 11 years do not include the gap between 2013, when the contract was cancelled and 2017 when Trenitalia purchased those trains and refurbished them. I would also like to point out that it was Trenitalia that did the refurb and made them operation while, when you buy a new train, it is not the operator's job, but the manufacturer's job to make sure those trains get certified. Something some people seem to miss every time.
I'm not sure FYRA could've worked in the Netherlands. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think it gets as cold in Italy as it does in the Netherlands. And as other commenters have mentioned, these things were gathering ice on the bottom which could possibly derail them. I rode one once, did get the chance to sit in the engineer's seat (was a kid back then but still, am one of the probably few people in the Netherlands who can say they sat in the engineer's seat). The reputations of these trains were completely trashed by the end of it as the news would frequently report on their failures, and in the end they were simply banned from running here by the government. But even if the government had allowed them to keep running, we here in the Netherlands didn't really fancy getting into a train that had reportedly fallen apart a few times and could probably electrocute us or derail if it froze too much. But... at least they have gotten a new life?
Italy has the Alps and the Apennines with glaciers, do you have glaciers in Holland?
in italy it's cold like in holland in winter, omg!
@@attenzioneallontanarsidall7940 do these run in the alpines or anywhere even remotely close to them?
@@roadtrain_ do you know where the alps and the apennines are located? do you think that at the base of these mountains there is a desert even in winter?
@@roadtrain_ look at a map of italy, there are portions of land wide 100 with the appennines in between the two seas...
@@roadtrain_ Unless you are within 20km from the sea, Italy does get cold in winter probably even colder than the Netherlands. More than 80% of the country is mountain which don't even exist in the Netherlands! Even flat parts of the country, like the pianura padana where this video took place, are cold. So, sorry but cold isn't a good excuse.
Nice vid. Time to show your face now. Fully appreciate that you give us the voiceover but you can’t compete with other RUclipsrs without showing us who you are. Take the plunge!
they can keep those crap trains from italy in italy, because there are better trains in the future between amsterdam the Netherlands and Belgium Antwerp , even those old NS intercity trains are still very good
I've been over last Spring and thank fuck I had a 20k mAh powerbank 'cause finding a power outlet in the travelling containers on rails you call trains is plain impossible. I haven't seen one without them over here, even the refurbed models from 90y ago have had them added
@@primobos01 That's the real problem.
Still the most ugly train ever!😩
The countries of central and northern Europe have hated Italy for centuries, because they envy art, music, the "dolce vita", food, fashion, sports cars ... and even trains. The Pendolino, so to speak, is an Italian project. Holland and Belgium have always hated Italy, and this hatred has also manifested itself towards this train (ETR 700) which ONLY with them, who knows why, has had problems. The reality is that there are commercial and political strategies between central-northern European countries that tend to exclude the Mediterranean countries....That's why the European Union and the euro are a FAILURE. We are many different races, many different languages, different mentalities and different sensitivities... The only thing that "Europeans" have in common is mutual hatred. Now and always....W Mussolini and Fascism!
I disagree about mussolini and fascism, but I agree about everything else: Belgium and Holland have always had a special hatred towards Italy.
Strange reaction... We hate Italy? Please, come on! This hurts me. This is about a train. In the time it was here, it was really a bad train, the problems in the video were real. You fixed the problems and that's great. But don't say we hate Italy. How could we if so many people drive FIAT of Alfa Romeo here and admire great Italian sport cars? So many Italian restaurants have become part of our streets now. And should so many people visit your country and cities if they hate is? No, my friend, we really like Italy, but we didn't like these trains. And that's all!
@@edogrol7482 Let's say that a good part of the problems were caused by the train drivers not respecting the limitations set by AnsaldoBreda in using the trains in snowy conditions (max speed of 130 km/h which was not respected and caused snow powder to be suctioned into the electric boxes causing short circuits and fires) and not doing the necessary pre-exercise runs to find some defects (like the doors collapsing when encountering another train...). NS and SNCB didn't want the trains and worked hard to send them back even if they were partially responsible for the faults.
@@rallysta74 Might be, but... huh? What has it to do with the opinion that we should hate Italy?
Please: W l'Italia! forget Mussolini and the fascism!
No, no no, the largest railway station in europe by volume is ... LEIPZIG in Germany.
Send it to Greece.