Silicon Valley VTA Sprinter

The new low-floor tram trains extend the public transport of the regional metropolis into the regional medium-sized towns as they can be operated as trams in the city and as interurban trains on the existing railway infrastructure, hence eliminating the need to change trains.

Chemnitz receives electro-diesel tram-train

These Citylink vehicles are fitted with a pantograph for 600 / 750 V operation and with two 6-cylinder diesel-gen sets featuring AdBlue technology, which ensure the mobility on the railway sections of the network.

See: Hybrid tramtrains.pdf

A quick listing of acronyms:

What are all these acronyms we are throwing about?  And, more specifically, what the heck is an EDMU?

• DMU – Diesel Multiple Unit
• EMU – Electrical Multiple Unit
  (a good example of an EMU is the VTA light rail)
• EDMU – Electro-Diesel Multiple Unity
  (works a lot like a hybrid bus: the primary propulsion is through an electric motor fed by batteries charged by a gas or diesel generator)
• IPEMU – Independently Powered Electric Multiple Unit
• Tram-Train – A tram-train is a light-rail public transport system where trams run through from an urban tramway network to main-line railway lines which are shared with conventional trains
  

In our case, an EDMU would run off diesel generators between Blossom Hill and Tamien, overhead electrical power between Tamien and Santa Clara and back to diesel generators between Santa Clara and Alviso.

There are a lot of creative people with many ideas as to what this train system should be called. So, the best way to be fair would be to gather all the proposals together and let everyone vote. You may select as many names as you want, but they will be rated based on the most times a specific name is selected.

[poll id=”2″]