The ability to uncouple and couple quickly was just as much because DSB planned to have a lot of portion working, as speeding up loading onto the Great Belt ferries, which were the only ones they used regularly when introduced. Once a train from Copenhagen reached Jylland it would divide at Fredericia (the east to west cut off south of Fredericia was not then open), with portions going south to the German border or west to Esbjerg, where it might divide and a portion go on up the west coast. At Vejle a portion might come off and go north-west to Struer, with possibly a portion of this continuing to Thisted. At Aarhus a section might be dropped because of lower passenger trafffic north of there. At Langå a portion might go across to Struer and at Aalborg only a portion might continue to Frederikshavn.
The sets in Spain are not IC3, they just have the rubber end connections.
Technically, the IC3 are very much the last of their generation and building more, would have had plenty of pitfalls. I have no doubt that there were those in DSB who would have preferred an IC3+, but realistically it would have been a seen as a PR disaster from the outset: the IC4 took a couple of years to be one.
Agreed, but the Great Belt was a major aspect as all services from Sjælland to Jutland passed this pinch point - and that was a substantial amount of traffic.
There were also services into Germany (Hamburg I believe) that used the ferry. I can’t remember if they went over to Sweden on that ferry though, as I didn’t get up there very often at the time.
The Spanish sets are more related to IC3 than just the rubber end connections, sharing very similar bodywork and quite a bit of other hardware, just where required adapted to the Iberian gauge. Some have oddly had the front end connections removed now as they’ve been refurbished.
Sadly in terms of them being the last of their generation, this is very likely as they were quite specialised, and that’s not the way rolling stock orders are done now.
At the time it may not have been as much of a PR disaster as you might think to commission an updated version, as the IR4 and Øresundståg variants were generally well received - and indeed featured a number of improvements too (such as the low floor flex-area). And nothing could have ended up being as much of a PR disaster as IC4.
It’s all a bit crazy really, as AnsaldoBreda have such a mixed reputation; having delivered some excellent projects in terms of their DriverlessMetro platform, but have utterly failed on this, Fyra, NSB type 72, multiple tram orders, and other things. I bet some interesting conversations were had during the Hitachi merger!
) but that doesn't half look dated. A timeless unit design, though, purely practical.
