“The X2000 is still a golden egg – unmatched in many respects”

DEBATE

REPLICA. If the train had been developed today, it would have become lighter, had better acceleration and could run faster. But the X2000 is still the train that carries traffic on the two main lines, writes Evert Andersson, professor emeritus in railway engineering.

This is a reply to Tomas Larsson’s reply from October 9. There, opinions are expressed about Swedish trains historically and in the present, which require some comments and clarifications.

The writer claims that the railways in democratic countries have gone backwards. That is a generalization that is not correct.

Of course, the railway has lost importance where there was no investment in renewing it according to the requirements of the times. And of course trains are not feasible everywhere in competition with motoring. But where investments have been made in modern railways and trains, they have been successful.

Where high-speed trains that run on separate newly built tracks have been invested in, as a rule, most of the travel has been taken over from domestic flights and also some from motorists. In addition, completely new travel has been generated. Good examples include Japan, Spain and France. All are democratic countries.

In Sweden, they have mainly invested in regional train traffic, which has achieved great success, despite the quality problems that the Swedish railway has. During the 25 years until 2019, that is, until the pandemic, regional train travel, calculated in passenger kilometers, increased by 260 percent, that is, it increased 3.6 times.

Long-distance train travel has increased by 60 percent during 1994‒2019, i.e., in percentage terms, significantly less than in regional train traffic, but significantly more than domestic flights, which have reached their stagnation level.

The fact that train travel has increased so much is due both to improvements and investments in the infrastructure and the introduction of regular, frequent departures with new, modern and faster trains. The question is how much train travel would have increased if the train service worked as reliably as it should, for example as in Switzerland and Japan. Probably considerably more.

It shows that there is a great interest and need for train travel, even in countries like Sweden. But in order to have the full effect, we should correct the organizational system errors that I believe the Swedish railway has.

The writer apparently believes that the X2000 (the train type’s name is X2) was and is a failure: that it is too heavy and was too expensive. Now it is the case that it is not the weight or the purchase price that are the main factors that determine a train’s attractiveness, performance and economy.

The X2000 has been and is a travel and economic golden egg. It is still, 34 years after its introduction, the train that carries the journey on the two main lines: Stockholm-Gothenburg and Stockholm-Malmö. X2000 is still decisive for SJ’s good financial results. Although there are also newer trains.

Few other trains in the world, if any, can achieve the journey times on Swedish tracks that the X2000 can.

Regardless of what the writer claims, the X2000 was designed to be able to run up to 40 percent faster around the curves than the trains did in the 1980s. This was realistic; the speed increase in most curves was 38.5 percent. Larsson’s speech that the train would derail at these speeds has no basis in reality.

After all, if the train had been developed today, it would have been somewhat lighter, had better acceleration and been able to run faster than what was done in the 1980s. There are 35 years of technical development between the X2000 and today’s most modern trains.

Of course, a thorough renovation of the X2000 is needed after all these years, but the basic concept itself is so potent that SJ is now modernizing the X2000 for use for another 20‒25 years. As we know, the train has special characteristics – tilting of the carriage bodies and so-called soft bogies that wear moderately on the track even when driving fast.

Finally, I agree with the writer that express trains on separate long-distance lines are unbeatable. But this was considered too expensive to build in the 1980s. And new trunk lines for higher speeds are still considered too expensive. Our current government decided two years ago to scrap plans for this.

Therefore, the X2000 remains an unrivaled train concept for traveling between our three largest cities, and intermediate towns for the foreseeable future.

Evert Anderssonprofessor emeritus in railway engineering, KTH