Bombardier is best known for its line of airliners and all kinds of railroad rolling stock.

In Europe the most common locomotive platform is called Traxx. Traxx is a modular design which can be adapted to just about any use in the heterogenous European railroading environment. The input voltage for the locomotives varies from one country to another and even within the country. For a true multiuse loco up to four of these can be added, and also four pantographs for the four different regions can be fitted on the roof. The locomotive comes in as a pure electric loco, a diesel loco or a combination of these solving the "last mile / kilometer" issue. This kind of last mile loco can take the freight cars all the way to customer unelectrified siding without a need for a separate switcher engine. Also many depot rails are without catenary wires.

The Bombardier also manufactures many heavier electric locomotives like IORE for LKAB in the far Nordic corner and Alp45DP which has been exported to U.S. both as electric and electric plus heavy diesel loco. Similar locos are in use today in China as well.

  More on Traxx Locomotives...

Pictures by Ilkka Siissalo, Peider SwissTrip and John McKey.

The IORE locomotives haul the northern Scandinavia rich magnetite and other minerals to the foundries and Narvik, Norway and Luleå, Sweden harbors for loading to the ships. 26 units are in daily use and 6 more in order to fulfill the world's growing need for raw materials.

If you are interested in the operations, companies and environment around these Europe's largest locos, you might find the following links helpful:

  Malmbana (Ore railway) in the north of Sweden and Norway...
  Bombardier IORE locos theme page...
  LKAB feeding the world with raw minerals...

Picture by John McKey.

Bombardier Regina train sets are highly popular in the Nordic in Sweden. You can almost say that every community respecting itself owns a batch of these X50 class trains for its needs.

With advanced design it was no wonder Bombardier decided to use one of these as a test bed for future Zefiro high speed trains. Extensive test were made during two years after which the train in the picture on the left was returned to its owner Transitio.

Picture by Ilkka Siissalo.

X55 of SJ
The newest Regina type train is the X55 of SJ in Sweden. The attractive silvery train is upgradable to 250 km/h, but currently runs only 200 km/h, so we might still call it semihighspeed train.

The X55 have replaced some of the X2000 units on north of Stockholm routes from the early year 2012.

Picture by Ilkka Siissalo.

X50, X51, X52, X53 and X54 of Swedish operators
Regina is a very popular EMU type used on Swedish smaller regional routes. In the picture is a very typical 2 car train of Västtrafik, pictured here in Jönköping.

Picture by Ilkka Siissalo.

Bombardier also took over supplying parts for "fallen flags" manufacturers and has taken in use some of their technologies. For some units like the BM73 EMU Bombardier later also has manufactured new coaches, etc.

  Here the Bm74b, a sister model of the Bm73 is seen at Oslo center between assignments.

Picture by Ilkka Siissalo.

Adtranz built a batch of troublesome fixed bogie Variotrams for Helsinki, Finland. These trams had severe availability problems for their first years due to their incompatibility with the landscape and geometry of track in Helsinki. The almost brand new trams evens started to fall apart because of structural weaknesses.

Then Bombardier took over the maintenance from the city of Helsinki, availability problems are mostly gone as are structural problems. However, the next generation of Helsinki trams are going to have a real turning bogie instead of a fixed one under Variotram.

Picture by John McKey.

Bombardier also has a large scale locomotive and train rebuilding business. One example of these is the Swedish class Rd locomotives, rebuilt from the much used Rc2 locos to a new condition.

  More on Rc and Rd Locomotives of Nordic...

Picture by Ilkka Siissalo.

Refurbishing of Green Cargo T44s to class Td locomotives
Another major refurbishing project for Bombardier's was the work done to T44 locomotives to extend their life and build them to class Td. 62 of the Green Cargo T44 locomotives were built in the first batch.


  An picture from Tomteboda (English: an Elf Village) in Stockholm shows one of the first units number 416 having been built to class Td.

Picture by Hannu Peltola.

  A sister locomotive Green Cargo Td 409 is another early convert and is seen here in Sweden at an unknown location.

Picture by Ilkka Siissalo.