Portrait: Bombardier Talent

Submitting now because DA wouldn't let me choose a category when I tried some hours ago.

So, even though has already submitted some pics of this type, I thought I'd still upload one of my shots.

Here we have a modern and common DMU, the Bombardier Talent, an acronym for "Talbot leichter Niederflur Triebwagen", which translates into "Talbot (name of the company before it was bought by Bombardier) light low-floor powered traincar". One can buy these in all kinds of configurations, from a two unit, to four unit train, with many options on the interior outfitting such as seating, class division, toilets etc. You can even buy them with indicator lights and rear view mirrors for use as trams. There are also many options on how high above the ground you want the entrances to be, depending on whether you use them in urban areas with high platforms or rural areas with no platforms at all sometimes. Most of these units are used on non-electrified routes that don't have enough traffic to make a classic engine+cars train an economic option.

Here we can see a three unit one, while ZCochrane's pics depict two unit trains. The two ends contain the diesel engines, so only the two trucks at either end are powered, the ones supporting the middle sections are just carrying bogies. The sections can only be parted in the shop, and individual units can be coupled with a fully automatic Scharfenberg coupler within a minute or two. The same coupling is also used by the ICE 3 and other modern DMUs and EMUs. Frankly, all passenger service seems to move towards dedicated trainsets, that can be coupled in this manner according to their utilisation. The ICE and the regional EMUs like the class 624 and its familiy are examples of this development. I still hope they'll keep some of the classic engine+cars trains around here...

The Design was carried out by Alexander Neumeister, who also Designed almost everything high speed these days, the Shinkansen, test Vehicles for the Transrapid, the ICE fleet, all of them contain his influence. Hence this regional DMU has a very sleek appearance, distinctively revealing its heritage from high speed train designs.

The company that runs these trains (a class 643 to be precise), the Prignitzer Eisenbahn, was bought by Arriva, but the livery and logos etc. were kept as they are. They just put an Arriva sticker above the VRR logo, which stands for "Verkerhsverbund Rhein-Ruhr", a public transport network for certain parts of Germany that pays other companies to run tram, bus and train lines.

Pic taken at Oberhausen Hauptbahnhof, the train will be departing towards Dorsten in a few minutes.