The Talent is a multiple unit railcar manufactured by Bombardier that was developed by Waggonfabrik Talbot in Aachen shortly before the company was acquired by Bombardier in 1995. The name Talent is an acronym in German for TALbot LEichter Nahverkehrs Triebwagen (in English, Talbot light suburban motor-coach).
It comes in a number of variants, including high-floor, low-floor, diesel-mechanical, diesel-hydraulic, diesel-electric, electric, and tilting, and in lengths of two, three, or four carriages. As with most multiple-unit trains, Talent units can run individually, or be coupled together to form longer trains.
The Talent is an articulated railcar with jacobs bogies. Partially as a result of this, the interior of an entire unit is essentially a single, long cabin; it is possible to see or walk from end to end without opening doors or passing through narrower gangways. The sharing of bogies also means that a Talent unit cannot be easily disassembled or rearranged without the assistance of a railway yard. In those variants whose floor is 590 mm (23.2 in) above the rails, this means that the articulation floor is raised, but with ramp access, since it needs to be higher than the wheel diameter, above rail level. in the variants with 800 and 960 mm (31.5 and 37.8 in) floor height, the floor is flat from the first door to the last. The endsections have a raised floor in all variants, because the traction equipment installed underneath requires more space than unpowered bogies.
After a prototype was presented in 1994, the first Talents entered service in 1996. They are used by mainline railways in Germany, Austria and Norway. More than 260 are in service worldwide.
In a more unusual use, three diesel Talents identical to Deutsche Bahn’s class 643 form the fleet of Ottawa’s O-Train, a pilot project for public rail transport which was to have given way to electric trams suitable for use on city streets until the cancellation of planned extension to the eight-kilometre (5 mi) line. As the Talent is not certified for concurrent shared-track operation with freight trains in North America, freight traffic is not permitted on the O-Train’s route while passenger services are running. Although it is still legally classified as a main-line railway, Transport Canada allow the O-Train to use One-Person Train Operation, with fares collected through a proof-of-payment system.
Famous quotes containing the word talent:
“His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)