CAF trains for the MerwedeLingelijn

The MerwedeLingelijn stretches 49km from Dordrecht to Gorinchem across the Drechtsteden, Molenlanden, and Gorinchem (DMG) regions in Zuid Holland. The line is mostly single-track with passing opportunities at most stations. Like other public transport modes in the area, the trains on the MerwedeLingelijn are operated by Qbuzz. They began providing public transport in the DMG regions in 2018, taking over from Arriva. With that, Qbuzz also inherited 10 electric Stadler GTW trains to run services on the line. Eight of these trains are 3-car GTW 2/8’s and the other two are 2-car GTW 2/6’s. These trains were delivered and put in service between 2008 and 2011 while Arriva still ran the line.

Last week, on the 14th of March a contract was signed to deliver 10 new CAF trains to replace the Stadler GTWs on the MerwedeLingelijn. As part of the larger deployment of ERTMS across the Netherlands, the rail line is expected to be upgraded between 2026 and 2028. In October 2022, after some research, the program director of the ERTMS implementation and the province of Zuid Holland came to an agreement that upgrading the existing Stadler rolling stock would be too expensive costing up to 47 million euros. This includes installation, deployment of rail replacement buses during the upgrade, and other factors. With that in mind, the purchase of the electric multiple units (EMUs) from CAF was carried out, and the contract between Qbuzz in the region was also extended from 2026 to December 2033.

The 10 new CAF trains will be 3-car trainsets capable of traveling up to 160 km/h, 20 km/h quicker than the Stadler GTWs, and based on the Civity platform. Similar trainsets are already used by NS all throughout the Netherlands under the name Sprinter Nieuwe Generatie (SNG). The final delivery of the 209th trainset to NS was only completed by CAF last May. The CAF press release about Qbuzz purchase also proudly talks about the automatic driving tests conducted under ERTMS in collaboration with NS using the Civity platform. Qbuzz expects to receive their trains starting by 2028, equipped with ERTMS, toilets, and other accessibility features up to specification of the Bestuursakkoord Toegankelijkheid Openbaar Vervoer (Administrative Agreement on Accessibility for Public Transport), another good reason to upgrade the rolling stock.

Hearing of this news, I thought it would be a good opportunity to understand how the rolling stock is currently deployed on the MerwedeLingelijn. Qbuzz runs trains every 15 minutes between Dordrecht and Gorinchem with every other service going all the way to Geldermalsen.

The single-tracked MerwedeLingelijn provides a few overtaking opportunities for trains going in the opposite direction and Qbuzz does make use of that during timetabling. Trains can cross in the double-tracked section between Dordrecht and Dordrecht - Stadspolders, after which all overtaking opportunities are at stations. These stations are Sliedrecht, Hardinxveld - Giessendam, Boven - Hardinxveld, Gorinchem, Leerdam, Beesd and Geldermalsen.

Looking at the graph, for trains between 06:00 and 10:00 on a regular Monday morning¹ we see overlaps at Dordrecht - Stadspolders, Sliedrecht, Boven - Hardinxveld and Gorinchem where trains pass each other. For trains destined for Geldermalsen, they pass the same service heading back to Leerdam. Qbuzz mentions the travel between Dordrecht - Stadspolders and Sliedrecht takes 7 minutes, limiting the frequency to every 15 minutes.

The Stadler 3-car GTW 2/8’s from my estimate looking at the illustration on RailWiki holds 156 seated passengers and a press release from Stadler confirms this mentioning seats for around 150 with a total capacity up to 275 people. I wasn’t able to find any numbers for the GTW 2/6, the 2-car variant, but I estimate the seating capacity to be close to 100 passengers.

Most of the services between Dordrecht to Gorinchem are served by the 2-car GTW 2/6 with the service continuing to Geldermalsen operated with a 3-car GTW 2/8. That already sets the CAF Civity order up for success since only 3-car variants were ordered with a capacity of up to 350 passengers. If frequency can’t be increased they still improve capacity along the line. They also come with two doors per car instead of one allowing for quicker movement of passengers on to and off the train.

I haven’t ridden on a Qbuzz-operated GTW before, maybe the time is now.