Ansaldo Breda - good, or just unlucky?

[Bayum]

Been reading up on Ansaldo over the last few months and it got me thinking. Were they generally a good company, or just unlucky with the media profile received from certain products? It seems to me that nearly everything they’ve churned out has suffered from extensive rust problems, and unfortunately, in some cases, refusal for rolling stock to be in service as long as six months!

 

[Groningen]

The Fyra between Amsterdam and Brussel!? Brrrrrr!

 

[edwin_m]

Have there been any problems with what they have produced since Hitachi took them over?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Have there been any problems with what they have produced since Hitachi took them over?

Less of a problem, but the 80x are certainly not without problems and some of the build quality (e.g. misaligned panels) is typically poor.

 

[edwin_m]

Less of a problem, but the 80x are certainly not without problems and some of the build quality (e.g. misaligned panels) is typically poor.

Is that more prevalent on the ones built in Italy, Japan or Newton Aycliffe? If it's roughly equal then it can't be a reason to condemn the ex-Ansaldo factory.

 

[TRAX]

The origins of AnsaldoBreda are alright. The last two to three decades of the company aren’t.

As some members might like a little insight on AB, here are the most notable examples:

• the Fyra affair. International high-speed service between Belgium and the Netherlands. 19 AnsaldoBreda V250 trains ordered in 2004, 9 built at the Pistoia factory between 2004 and 2011, the 10 remaining trains were cancelled.
There were huge delays in construction and delivery.
When the trains started being tested and entered service, major problems with the build quality of the trains arose: rust, snow/ice clogging up equipment, wires dangling without any protection, a piece of roof torn off, a collapsed doorstep, and some equipment and systems issues.
The trains ended up running commercially for less than a year. NS had ordered 16 of them and received 9, and the SNCB orders were never accepted.
The V250 trains are now part of the Trenitalia fleet as their ETR700 class.

• the IC4 saga. In 2000, DSB Danish Railways ordered 83 high-speed DMUs from AnsaldoBreda Pistoia with FPT/Iveco engines (those in the know about Iveco engines will guess that AnsaldoBreda/Iveco is a dangerous combination).
The first were supposed to enter service in 2003. This ended up happening in 2007. The last one arrived in 2013.
Among the issues with the IC4 trains: a faulty ‘mobile’ automatic coupling system preventing DSB from using the trains in a 4-unit multiple formation, reducing their capacity and the purpose DSB had bought them for (high-usage intercity routes); a faulty braking system meaning the top speed of the units had to be reduced from 200 km/h to 170 km/h (140 km/h during the autumn season), again reducing their capability to answer the DSB’s intercity needs and often reducing their use to regional duties.
Cracking appeared early on in axle box housings; cracked exhaust manifolds and broken turbocharger fixing bolts. And the usual systems failures.
There are a lot of details here: https://www.railengineer.uk/2015/02/10/the-cost-of-failure/
DSB considered retiring the trains very early on, but would’ve faced bankruptcy if they had done so.
82 trains are in service now (81 if they scrap the unit involved in the Great Belt accident of two days ago), and DSB has planned their retirement for 2024, around 10 years after the last units were delivered.
83 trains were ordered, but Silvio Berlusconi and AnsaldoBreda gave one to Libya’s Gaddafi as a gift.

• Sirio. The Swedish city of Gothenburg ordered 65 Sirio trams from AnsaldoBreda, planned for delivery for 2005 onwards. From the start, they were plagued with reliability issues, causing track damage, poor ride quality, and malfunctioning air conditioners. Extensive corrosion was then detected on the trams in the 2010s. Even the corrosion repairs were lousy.

• Oslo SL95. Oslo received 32 SL95 trams from AnsaldoBreda from 1999 onwards. Rust appeared early on during the snowy months.

This is just a synthesis of just some of the recent AnsaldoBreda issues which affected brand-new trains as soon as they came out of production. More and better-detailed information can of course be found on the internet.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Is that more prevalent on the ones built in Italy, Japan or Newton Aycliffe? If it's roughly equal then it can't be a reason to condemn the ex-Ansaldo factory.

I'm not sure to be honest.

 

[dgl]

Don't forget the trams built by AnsaldoBreda for the UK, build quality is supposedly non existent.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think this is real...

Fyra set with "Their food may be good but...don't buy trains from Italy!" graffitied down the side

 

[Crossover]

Don't forget the trams built by AnsaldoBreda for the UK, build quality is supposedly non existent.

Well, T68, T68A and T69 were their products, all of which have been replaced in less than their design life with many scrapped. T69's were rumoured to have all been unique particularly in the sense that the wiring loom was different on every set!

 

[swt class 450]

Ansaldo Breda are nothing but an absolute disaster of a company. Almost everything they have made has been full of problems. Although surprisingly the NSB BM72 trains actually seem to be successful. I think this is probably the only decent train that Ansaldo Breda has ever built.

 

[TRAX]

The BM72s did have quite a few problems when they arrived, more than the usual teething problems trains normally have. Among which: on arrival, the trains were too heavy to allow standing passengers (!) and weight had to be saved to allow 350 standing passengers on the train; the delivery and introduction of the trains were heavily delayed, and NSB indicated that they had never tested a new train do that extent before; electronics of the train were interfering with signals, making them switch from a proceed aspect to a stop aspect before the train had passed it, instead of after; there were 40 AnsaldoBreda employees in Norway working 60-hour shifts (!) to try making the trains work. In 2004, when the trains were still ´brand-new’ (to AB’s standards...), rust was found on the axles.

So, even the 72s were plagued by typical AnsaldoBreda problems. Again, it has been shown that AB got this contract mainly because they offered a product significantly less expensive than the competition (Adtranz and Alstom on that contract), which is a recurring factor in the AnsaldoBreda sagas.

 

[swt class 450]

Thanks for the info. Perhaps they weren't as successful as i thought then. So has Ansaldo Breda actually built anything decent? Is there anything that they have built that has run well and hasn't had any problems?

 

[SHD]

Thanks for the info. Perhaps they weren't as successful as i thought then. So has Ansaldo Breda actually built anything decent? Is there anything that they have built that has run well and hasn't had any problems?

As TRAX wrote - both Ansaldo Trasporti and Breda Costruzioni Ferroviarie, which merged in 2001, had a long history of building railway equipment, some of which truly remarkable in longevity and reliability. As an example, Breda tramcars built in the late twenties are still in revenue service in Milano.

 

[43096]

Been reading up on Ansaldo over the last few months and it got me thinking. Were they generally a good company, or just unlucky with the media profile received from certain products? It seems to me that nearly everything they’ve churned out has suffered from extensive rust problems, and unfortunately, in some cases, refusal for rolling stock to be in service as long as six months!

I don’t see how the question you asked is right. Giving a choice of good or unlucky is very skewed, especially when the reality is they were a shockingly awful company, with a long track record (pun intended) of delivery appalling products, all the while being propped up by orders from the Italian state. Good or unlucky? Neither.

 

[TRAX]

The question indeed should’ve been bad or unlucky ?

 

[swt class 450]

Out of interest were the IC2 trains even worse than the IC4 trains? I thought they were the exact same train (the IC2 being two coaches and the IC4 being four coaches) but i wonder why they withdrew the entire IC2 fleet a few years ago but kept the entire IC4 fleet?

 

[craigybagel]

Let's not forget also various fleets in America that have caused headaches. The San Francisco MUNI Metro until recently was a 100% Breda fleet, that caused all kinds of problems. It's now being replaced with Siemens units. Over in Washington, certain Breda units have been retired early because of issues. The list goes on.....