Last IC4 train finally arrives

The final delivery means that the 13-year battle between DSB and suppliers AnsaldoBreda could finally be at an end

A long nightmare may finally be coming to some sort of end for DSB after the state railway providers received the last IC4 train from Italy on Friday.

The delivery means that DSB has acquired all of the 82 trains that were promised to it by Italian supplier AnsaldoBreda way back in 2000.

The final train arrival also means that DSB is now unable to cancel the order.

13 years of pain
Steen Schougaard Christensen, the head of DSB, hopes that the newly-delivered trains won’t experience the same issues that hampered previous deliveries, but he wouldn’t make any promises.

“We won’t guarantee anything because you must be careful when it comes to the IC4s, but we hope that they will be operationally stable to the point that we will see many IC4 trains on the rails in the coming years,” Christensen told DR Nyheder. “We won’t deploy them until we are sure they are operational.”

The final delivery means that the 13-year battle between DSB and suppliers AnsaldoBreda could finally be at an end. 

“We may be standing at the end of this miserable chapter, and it really has been a miserable chapter for DSB,” Jesper Højbjerg Christensen, a communications professional who has been following the IC4 drama for years, told DR Nyheder.

Needed until 2025
Despite the controversy over the problem-riddled IC4 trains, the transport minister, Pia Olsen Dyhr (Socialistisk Folkeparti), was adamant that they were needed, at least until the future electrical train plans are realised in 2025.

“We must get the best out of the IC4s until we have electrified the railways,” Dyhr told Ritzau news service. 

82 trains to Denmark, one to Libya
When the trains were ordered in 2000, the IC4 was seen as the train of the future for the Danish railways. But not only were they continuously delayed, when they finally did arrive they were ridden with technical and structural issues that kept many of them from ever carrying passengers.

At the moment, just 23 of the 82 trains are on the railways. Another 25 have been approved and are undergoing testing, while 34 are still awaiting upgrades and approval.

Originally, DSB was promised 83 trains, but in a bizarre twist of events, the last train ended up in the hands of Libya’s former dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

DSB expects to have the trains approved and be ready for service sometime during 2014. 

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