ECS moves abroad

[158801]

Do other countries have long distance Empty Stock Moves in order to get a train into service ?

A recent thread

ECS moves that could become passenger services

I heard that West Midlands Railway recently converted some ECS moves into passenger services, particularly in the early morning. Are there other examples from TOCs where a service could be converted? What would be the reasons for and against such changes?

www.railforums.co.uk

Shows some of the UK ECS moves

But do countries, such as France, run an empty train for an hour or two from A to B to get it into service

 

[martin2345uk]

Eurostar have ECS moves between London and Paris and London and Brussels!

 

[Bemined]

I believe there is also one empty stock movement per week from Brussels to Amsterdam. Within the Netherlands I don't think you will find many multi-hour empty stock movements, although there are some long maintenance runs as some rolling stock has a specific maintenance site.

 

[DanielB]

In the past NS also had moves from The Hague to Dordrecht prior to some peak services.

Some regional operators do have long empty stock movements as well. Qbuzz runs them from Dordrecht to the Stadler maintenance facility in Blerick, that's almost the entire width of the country.
NS has some workshops in the extremities of the country, but AFAIK usually use passenger services to move trains towards them. Though according to photos the NS FLIRTs are maintained in Maastricht and those don't go further south than Weert in regular service, so that's also a longer empty move.

 

[Halish Railway]

Does Amtrak tagging on some locomotives and carriages to the back of their New York to Chicago “Cardinal” services in order to get them to the Beech Grove workshop in Indianapolis count?

 

[Pakenhamtrain]

Melbourne there's plenty. The biggest there are empty cars in peak from the likes of Pakenham East depot, Dandenong yard and Westall yard to form Sunbury and Watergardens trains from Anzac station. Pakenham East is a good 60km from Anzac and an hour easy. The train will only stop once at Clayton to transfer to CBTC. Im sure there's a few on other lines as well. Since Jolimont yard closed in the 90s everything was moved out to suburbia. The only inner city locations for stabling are Burnley, Victoria Park, North Melbourne, Maculay and Melbourne Yards.


V/Line have a few from memory to either send trains to a yard or back to Melbourne.

 

[Bemined]

NS has some workshops in the extremities of the country, but AFAIK usually use passenger services to move trains towards them. Though according to photos the NS FLIRTs are maintained in Maastricht and those don't go further south than Weert in regular service, so that's also a longer empty move.

Empty stock runs between Watergraafsmeer and The Hague/Rotterdam, Onnen and Amersfoort, Eindhoven and Maastricht or Leidschendam and Zutphen still occur on regular basis.

 

[jpl]

Looking at the working timetable, I can say that in Finland regular ECS moves are rare. Almost all ECS moves here are short-term planned due to maintenance needs or engineering works requiring alterations to train diagrams. Also, the current prediction and optimisation tools used by VR have largely eliminated the need for long distance ECS moves.

That said, going back ten years, the timetable wasn't well optimised as it is now. In the past there used to be some regular ECS moves between larger cities (for example, from Tampere to Turku, which takes over 2 hours).

 

[Taunton]

Does Amtrak tagging on some locomotives and carriages to the back of their New York to Chicago “Cardinal” services in order to get them to the Beech Grove workshop in Indianapolis count?

Special extra services are much less common on Amtrak in recent years, due to shortage of stock, but in past times it happened at peak times to run services in two parts a few minutes apart, both full length, and to get the stock to the starting point, or return afterwards, would be done by an empty movement, if it was beyond attaching to a regular service. Some were substantial distances, such as New York or Chicago to Florida around peak travel dates.

The duplicate services were called "Extra Sections", and the USA expression for an ECS is "Deadhead". The latter term is also used for crews travelling 'on the cushions', not on duty but getting to a start point. It was a requirement until recent times for extra sections not in the timetable to run with white flags flying on either side of the locomotive, which can sometimes be seen in old photos.

The most spectacular event ever, now disappearing into history, was the enormous movement of military suddenly returning by sea at the end of 1945 from the Pacific war, for which just about every US railway sent anything and everything that could run right across the continent deadhead to the West Coast to bring them home