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The IC4 is an
inter-city rail Inter-city rail services are express passenger train services that run services that connect cities over longer distances than commuter or regional trains. There is no precise definition of inter-city rail; its meaning may vary from country ...
train built by the Italian train manufacturer
AnsaldoBreda Hitachi Rail Italy S.p.A. is a multinational rolling stock manufacturer company based in Pistoia, Italy. Formerly AnsaldoBreda S.p.A., a subsidiary of state-owned Finmeccanica, the company was sold in 2015 to Hitachi Rail of Japan. After the ...
for the trans-
Great Belt The Great Belt ( da, Storebælt, ) is a strait between the major islands of Zealand (''Sjælland'') and Funen (''Fyn'') in Denmark. It is one of the three Danish Straits. Effectively dividing Denmark in two, the Belt was served by the Great B ...
routes of Danske Statsbaner (DSB),
Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of Denmark , establish ...
's national railway operator. Under DSB's 'Good trains for everyone' plan ('Gode tog til alle'), the intent of the IC4 project was to replace several types of outdated rolling stock. However, various delays and shortcomings have turned the project into a major political issue. The IC4 units were originally scheduled to enter DSB's Intercity service in 2003. On 25 June 2007, one IC4 unit (trainset no. 4) entered regional service between
Aarhus Aarhus (, , ; officially spelled Århus from 1948 until 1 January 2011) is the second-largest city in Denmark and the seat of Aarhus Municipality. It is located on the eastern shore of Jutland in the Kattegat sea and approximately northwe ...
and
Aalborg Aalborg (, , ) is Denmark's List of cities in Denmark by population, fourth largest town (behind Copenhagen, Aarhus, and Odense) with a population of 119,862 (1 July 2022) in the town proper and an Urban area, urban population of 143,598 (1 July ...
. On 27 August 2007, another test train entered regional passenger service between
Aarhus Aarhus (, , ; officially spelled Århus from 1948 until 1 January 2011) is the second-largest city in Denmark and the seat of Aarhus Municipality. It is located on the eastern shore of Jutland in the Kattegat sea and approximately northwe ...
and
Fredericia Fredericia () is a town located in Fredericia Municipality in the southeastern part of the Jutland peninsula in Denmark. The city is part of the Triangle Region, which includes the neighbouring cities of Kolding and Vejle. It was founded in 16 ...
in eastern
Jutland Jutland ( da, Jylland ; german: Jütland ; ang, Ēota land ), known anciently as the Cimbric or Cimbrian Peninsula ( la, Cimbricus Chersonesus; da, den Kimbriske Halvø, links=no or ; german: Kimbrische Halbinsel, links=no), is a peninsula of ...
. Two further units entered regional service during the autumn of 2007. By the end of 2007, DSB and AnsaldoBreda were to agree when the IC4 would be ready for Intercity and IntercityLyn (express inter-city) services. This, however, required the approval of the Danish National Rail Authority. The IC4's first long-distance run, from
Aalborg Aalborg (, , ) is Denmark's List of cities in Denmark by population, fourth largest town (behind Copenhagen, Aarhus, and Odense) with a population of 119,862 (1 July 2022) in the town proper and an Urban area, urban population of 143,598 (1 July ...
to
Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan a ...
, took place on 7 August 2008, while the train finally received approval for regular service with multiple connected trainsets on 9 November 2010. The 82nd and final unit (MG 5683) was delivered to DSB in September 2013, and as of 2015, IC4 trains are in regular operation on the Aarhus-Copenhagen, Aarhus-Aalborg, Aarhus-Esbjerg, Odense-Fredericia and Copenhagen-Holbæk-Kalundborg connections.


Equipment and specifications

The train is powered by four low-emission diesel engines with a
common rail Common rail direct fuel injection is a direct fuel injection system built around a high-pressure (over ) fuel rail feeding solenoid valves, as opposed to a low-pressure fuel pump feeding unit injectors (or pump nozzles). High-pressure injecti ...
direct-injection system, giving a total power output of (or 3045 metric hp). The engines are V8s from
Iveco IVECO, an acronym for Industrial Vehicles Corporation, is an Italian multinational transport vehicle manufacturing company. It designs and builds light, medium, and heavy commercial vehicles. The name IVECO first appeared in 1975 after a merger ...
. The maximum allowed speed of the train is . Each train set consists of four
articulated car Articulated cars are rail vehicles which consist of a number of cars which are semi-permanently attached to each other and share common Jacobs bogies or axles and/or have car elements without axles suspended by the neighbouring car elements. ...
s with a total length of , and is capable of seating 204 people. Built of light
aluminium alloy An aluminium alloy (or aluminum alloy; see spelling differences) is an alloy in which aluminium (Al) is the predominant metal. The typical alloying elements are copper, magnesium, manganese, silicon, tin, nickel and zinc. There are two pr ...
s, each trainset weighs , and a fully operational (including diesel, water, etc.) weight of . Up to four trainsets can be coupled together into a single train. However, there are problems associated with this configuration, so in the first instance it was decided to have the IC4 approved using one trainset only, with approval for multi-unit configurations to be sought later. Since a single trainset is too short for efficient long-distance operations, the first trains were used mainly for regional services. In December 2016, DSB gave up the efforts to connect four trainsets.


Design

The design of the train is the outcome of cooperation between DSB's own designers, with an emphasis on Nordic minimalist design, and the Italian design company
Pininfarina Pininfarina S.p.A. (short for Carrozzeria Pininfarina) is an Italian car design firm and coachbuilder, with headquarters in Cambiano, Turin, Italy. The company was founded by Battista "Pinin" Farina in 1930. On 14 December 2015, the Indian ...
(famous for designing Ferrari cars) emphasizing Italian chic and curved lines. Externally, the bullet-shaped extremities at each end of the trainset—which are familiar from high-speed trains throughout Europe—represent a break with the design of the IC3 train, whose passengers are able to cross over between trainsets. The train interior features natural materials consistent with Scandinavia's design tradition, an audio/video information system with seat reservation displays, and a lounge area.


Controversy

The IC4 train has become a contentious issue in Danish politics, mainly because of the long delays in AnsaldoBreda’s delivery of the trains. The Danish Minister of Traffic and Energy is routinely required to submit progress updates to parliament, and DSB's choice of a heavily customised train is often criticised as being the major reason for the delays. The expense involved in lengthening the platforms of several stations along the IC4 routes is the source of much additional criticism. In November 2006, it was revealed that the trains appeared to be working properly, but that the formal documentation requirements of the safety authorities were preventing the train from entering service fully. By the end of October 2007, four IC4 units had entered regional service in
Jutland Jutland ( da, Jylland ; german: Jütland ; ang, Ēota land ), known anciently as the Cimbric or Cimbrian Peninsula ( la, Cimbricus Chersonesus; da, den Kimbriske Halvø, links=no or ; german: Kimbrische Halbinsel, links=no), is a peninsula of ...
. However, service was suspended at the end of February 2008 because of problems with exhaust fumes. There have been many faults that did not really prevent the train from being used, but were still unacceptable, such as spurious warnings and various other computer-related problems.


Ultimatum

In June 2008, DSB gave AnsaldoBreda an ultimatum whereby at least 14 trains had to be approved and ready for regular service before May 2009; otherwise, the contract would be cancelled and DSB would demand its money back and return its trains to the factory. DSB had ordered a total of 83 IC4 trainsets in 2000, with delivery originally scheduled for 2003. On 7 August 2008, train no. 13 completed a return trip from
Aarhus Aarhus (, , ; officially spelled Århus from 1948 until 1 January 2011) is the second-largest city in Denmark and the seat of Aarhus Municipality. It is located on the eastern shore of Jutland in the Kattegat sea and approximately northwe ...
H. to
Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan a ...
H. with passengers aboard. On 21 May 2009, it became clear that the ultimatum had been met, with 15 trains having been delivered, although a subclause condition stating that at least one trainset should have been tested and approved for coupling to other units had not yet been met.


Current situation

Along with the (partial) fulfilment of the ultimatum, DSB also announced it had reached an agreement with AnsaldoBreda concerning delivery of the remaining trainsets. The final delivery date would be extended to 2012. AnsaldoBreda would drop all further development, and all subsequent trainsets would be identical to the current test train. All final updates would be performed by DSB. AnsaldoBreda was to pay DSB compensation of DKK 2 billion, which, together with the previously paid compensation fees, will ultimately entail refunding half the original value of the contract. DSB reserved the right to cancel the contract if more than seven trains were delivered over six months late. DSB is suffering from a shortage of trainsets and reliability problems with the current trainsets, since the existing IC3s are old and require replacement. Ordering new IC3s would be 'expensive and technically challenging', according to DSB. DSB, in cooperation with
Deutsche Bahn The (; abbreviated as DB or DB AG) is the national railway company of Germany. Headquartered in the Bahntower in Berlin, it is a joint-stock company ( AG). The Federal Republic of Germany is its single shareholder. describes itself as the ...
, has started using German tilting ICE-TD diesel trains to and from Germany. This has relieved the situation somewhat, despite the high cost of these trains and the expense of adapting them for Danish traffic. In October 2008, DSB also ordered 45 new double-decker coaches from Bombardier, to be delivered from the end of 2009 onwards. From August 2009, DSB was running 17 scheduled trains daily using the IC4. However, DSB was using only single IC4 sets, not multiple connected sets, limiting their utility. This is because they could not be used during rush hours, as longer trains are needed at those times. On 9 November 2010, after a seven-year delay, DSB finally completed the certification process for multiple connected IC4 trainsets. These were scheduled to enter service in January 2011. At the end April 2011, DSB's director, Frank Olesen, stated that further economic sanctions against AnsaldoBreda were likely to be imposed as a result of continuing problems with the quality of the trains delivered. These problems had caused the trains to have to be upgraded to Danish standards at DSB's own expense at its facility in
Randers Randers () is a city in Randers Municipality, Central Denmark Region on the Jutland peninsula. It is Denmark's sixth-largest city, with a population of 62,802 (as of 1 January 2022). In November 2011, two IC4 trains failed to stop at stop signals. This caused Trafikstyrelsen (the Transportation Authority) to prohibit the IC4 from running until the problems had been fully investigated. On 2 July 2012, the DSB announced that the Transportation Authority had approved Denmark's railway operator to put back into operation the fleet of 37 IC4s which had been withdrawn from service in November 2011. On 18 December 2012 an agreement was reached between AnsaldoBreda and Danish railways to solve the problems. The 82nd and final unit (MG 5683) was delivered to DSB in September, 2013. As of 2014, IC4 trains are in regular operation between
Aarhus Aarhus (, , ; officially spelled Århus from 1948 until 1 January 2011) is the second-largest city in Denmark and the seat of Aarhus Municipality. It is located on the eastern shore of Jutland in the Kattegat sea and approximately northwe ...
and
Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan a ...
,
Aarhus Aarhus (, , ; officially spelled Århus from 1948 until 1 January 2011) is the second-largest city in Denmark and the seat of Aarhus Municipality. It is located on the eastern shore of Jutland in the Kattegat sea and approximately northwe ...
-
Aalborg Aalborg (, , ) is Denmark's List of cities in Denmark by population, fourth largest town (behind Copenhagen, Aarhus, and Odense) with a population of 119,862 (1 July 2022) in the town proper and an Urban area, urban population of 143,598 (1 July ...
,
Aarhus Aarhus (, , ; officially spelled Århus from 1948 until 1 January 2011) is the second-largest city in Denmark and the seat of Aarhus Municipality. It is located on the eastern shore of Jutland in the Kattegat sea and approximately northwe ...
-
Esbjerg Esbjerg (, ) is a seaport town and seat of Esbjerg Municipality on the west coast of the Jutland peninsula in southwest Denmark. By road, it is west of Kolding and southwest of Aarhus. With an urban population of 71,698 (1 January 2022) ...
and
Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan a ...
-
Kalundborg Kalundborg () is a Danish city with a population of 16,211 (1 January 2022),Kolding Kolding () is a Danish seaport located at the head of Kolding Fjord in the Region of Southern Denmark. It is the seat of Kolding Municipality. It is a transportation, commercial, and manufacturing centre, and has numerous industrial companie ...
-
Vejle Vejle () is a city in Denmark, in the southeast of the Jutland Peninsula at the head of Vejle Fjord, where the Vejle River and Grejs River and their valleys converge. It is the site of the councils of Vejle Municipality ('' kommune'') and the ...
. Concerns about reliability remain, however, especially after the failure of an IC4 trainset in the Great Belt tunnel on February 24, 2014 and the consequent evacuation of 191 passengers to another trainset. In September 2014 an investigation by the Danish Department of Transport was launched to find whether it was more economical to have the delivered trains scrapped or have them rebuilt for slower regional traffic. Scrapping the trains could lead to DSB filing for bankruptcy. It was announced on 15 December 2016 that the troubled fleet would be retained, but subject to a number of reliability improvements and with a view to withdrawal once a replacement fleet became available from 2024 onwards. In 2017, the Romanian rolling stock manufacturer Astra Vagoane Călători purchased 15 IC2 units from DSB, to use them for its own transport division, Astra Trans Carpatic. On 2 January 2019 two units were damaged, at least one of them beyond repair, in the
Great Belt Bridge rail accident The Great Belt Bridge rail accident occurred on 2 January 2019 on the Great Belt Fixed Link in Denmark when a passenger train collided with a semi-trailer from or on a passing freight train. The Great Belt Fixed Link is an long bridge–tun ...
. By mid-2019 DSB's quarterly reports showed that the IC4 units had become significantly more reliable, achieving a mean distance between failures (MDBF) of (with a failure being defined as one causing a delay of more than three minutes). This significantly exceeded the target set in the December 2016 reliability recommendation, but nevertheless compared poorly to the MDBF achieved by the older IC3 fleet at the same time. DSB's Operations Director Per Schrøder attributed the increase to a number of improvements and upgrades, including new train management system software, and to DSB's engineers having increased their level of familiarity with the fleet. Schrøder also stated that the overall reliability of the fleet had been improved by the withdrawing of a number of particularly problematic units, which he referred to as "Monday models" and "hangar queens". DSB's operations plan at the time called for 42 of the remaining units to be available for service at any given time, from which a maximum of 37 would be routinely allocated for use. In July 2020 DSB offered 11 of the withdrawn "hangar queen" units for sale through a broker in
England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...
, describing them as being "in very good working order". DSB's Director of Strategy and Rolling Stock, Jürgen Müller, later clarified that the wording had been prepared by the broker, rather than by DSB. However, he also noted that all 11 units had been continuously maintained since being withdrawn, and that they were being sold because the increasing reliability of the main IC4 fleet had made them redundant. Indeed, reliability figures released in August 2020 indicated that the IC4 fleet had achieved its best-ever MDBF of approximately sufficient for the National Audit Office () to declare that it was satisfied that DSB had completed commissioning the fleet. On 2 June 2022, Danish news magazine published an article claiming that DSB has agreed to sell the entire fleet of 74 IC4 unitsnot just the 11 previously offered for saleto an undisclosed foreign buyer. The sale is believed to involve an initial delivery of 14 units, with the remainder of the fleet to follow as it is phased out of operation with DSB. The exact timing will depend on the progress of DSB's order for the Alstom Coradia Stream electric multiple-unit trains that will replace the IC4 fleet; as of May 2022 the first of the new units is expected to enter service in mid-2025.


Libyan trainset

In March 2013, as well as in earlier media reports, it was reported that one of the missing IC4 trainsets planned for delivery in Denmark had been found in
Libya Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya ( ar, دولة ليبيا, Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Suda ...
. Reportedly, AnsaldoBreda and the then Italian
prime minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is ...
Silvio Berlusconi Silvio Berlusconi ( ; ; born 29 September 1936) is an Italian media tycoon and politician who served as Prime Minister of Italy in four governments from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011. He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies f ...
gave Libyan
dictator A dictator is a political leader who possesses absolute power. A dictatorship is a state ruled by one dictator or by a small clique. The word originated as the title of a Roman dictator elected by the Roman Senate to rule the republic in time ...
Muammar Gaddafi Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, . Due to the lack of standardization of transcribing written and regionally pronounced Arabic, Gaddafi's name has been romanized in various ways. A 1986 column by '' The Straight Dope'' lists 32 spellin ...
the trainset as a present in 2009 on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Gaddafi's accession to power. It is visible on Google Maps satellite (at ) and geotagged photos. A DR film crew visited the site of the train in question in March 2013.


Gallery

File:IC4 cap view.JPG, Cab view (unit 5632) File:IC4 exterior green.JPG, DSB logo in dark blue and entry doors partially in green (unit 5639) File:IC4 exterior red.JPG, DSB logo and entry doors partially in red (unit 5653) File:IC4 bogie.JPG, ID from the vehicle register and part of a Jacobs bogie File:IC4 HVAC.JPG, HVAC seen from above File:IC4 interior 2.JPG, 32-seat compartment File:IC4 interior 3.JPG, Bistro File:IC4 interior 4.JPG, Low-floor coach – Toilet compartment File:IC4 interior 6.JPG, Low-floor coach - Space for a wheelchair File:IC4 interior 5.JPG, Luggage area at each end of the MG units File:09.09.21 Constanța FP6718+MP5718 (51489543067).jpg, ASTRA Trans Carpatic IC2


See also

*
List of high-speed trains The following is a list of high-speed trains that have been, are, or will be in commercial service. A high-speed train High-speed rail (HSR) is a type of rail system that runs significantly faster than traditional rail, using an integrate ...


References


External links


Pictures of the train on the DSB website (in Danish)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ic4 DSB multiple units Multiple units of Denmark High-speed rail in Denmark AnsaldoBreda multiple units Articulated passenger trains Passenger trains running at least at 200 km/h in commercial operations