The first of 30 Moderus Gamma low-floor trams was delivered to MPK Łódź public transport company on the night of 30 November to 1 December. The five-section vehicle was transported by low-loader from the Modertrans factory near Poznań to Łódź.
The new vehicle is a five-car Moderus Gamma LF 06 AC with two longer end cars, each with two doors, resting at the end of the car on two out-turning bogies and in the middle on two articulated wagons with fixed bogies and a central sedan with one door each. The vehicles have a length of about 32 metres. The low-floor proportion is over 80%. The vehicles are equipped with air conditioning and weigh 43 tonnes each. The engines have an output of 50 kW. However, it is not known how many axles are driven. Despite the different functions, both the fixed bogies and the conventional turning bogies can be interchanged. The drive converters are operated with seventh generation IGBT’s, while the auxiliary converter is equipped with SiC (Silicon Carbide) semi-conductors.
The manufacturer has not yet disclosed any further technical details. What is striking is that the vehicle architecture has been adapted to MPK’s requirements. So far Modertrans has delivered three-part bogie railcars with two centrally arranged bogies each to the Poznań and Wrocław tramways. The vehicle concept for Łódź, on the other hand, is a mixture between bogie and multi-articulated vehicle. The vehicle front was also redesigned in contrast to the vehicles for Poznań and Wrocław. The exterior design of the trams was selected in 2020 as part of an online survey.
The vehicles ordered in January 2020 have a contract value of approximately 268.5 million złoty (approximately 57.4 million euros), which corresponds to approximately 1.9 million euros per vehicle.
The tram network of Łódź is one of the largest tram networks in Poland and one of the largest metre-gauge networks in the world, with a length of about 124 km. Currently, MPK Łódź operates 463 trams, of which only 25 % are low-floor or partially low-floor. The new Moderus Gamma trams will replace the oldest Konstal 805Na high-floor vehicles. Currently, MPK still has 346 four-axle high-floor four-axle vehicles in its fleet, each of which is used in double traction. Last year, the operator tested two Variotrams from Helsinki, however the tests proved unsuccessful. We reported here.
So far, Modertrans has been able to assert itself in particular as a supplier on the Polish tram market. In addition to numerous modernisation projects, Modertrans has sold low-floor trams for the Poznań in-house operation as well as for Wrocław and, in the short four-car variant, also as an “export” for the Woltersdorf tramway. With the prototype and the vehicles now in delivery for Łódź, Modertrans has so far delivered 160 Moderus Gamma system vehicles.
The references of the Moderus Gamma so far:
- Prototype: 1 five-car, six-axle Moderus Gamma LF 01 AC as multi-articulated vehicle
- Poznań:
- 30 three-car, eight-axle Moderus Gamma LF02 AC in unidirectional design
- 20 three-car, eight-axle Moderus Gamma LF03 AC BD in bidirectional design
- Wrocław: 25 (+21 currently in delivery) three-car, eight-axle Moderus Gamma LF 07 AC in unidirectional design
- Łódź: 30 five-car, eight-axle Moderus Gamma LF 06 AC in unidirectional design, in delivery
- Woltersdorf: 3 single-car Moderus Gamma LF 10 AC BD bidirectional design, delivery from 2023
We reported on the vehicles for Poznań here:
