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Two UTEs (Triple Electric Units), dating from the 60s and which stopped working 20 years ago, will return to the Sintra line, but now as historic trains, mainly intended for tourists visiting the town and on direct trips ( nonstop) by Rossio.
The business model is not yet defined and depends on the recovery of tourism after the pandemic. If it returns to levels close to those that existed until a year ago, the president of the PC, Nuno Freitas, believes that the launch of several daily trips between Rossio and Sintra, outside of rush hour, will be justified.
But not only. They may also do some rotations in normal operation, on weekends, with no price increase, so that people can experience train travel. Classic.
“The idea is to establish an affective and emotional relationship between the Portuguese and the PC”, says the president of the company. “We only had historic trains in the north [na linha do Douro e no Vouga] and we think that we should also have that offer in Lisbon ”.
For Nuno Freitas, CP’s main mission is to provide a good service to the population, “but if the company wants to have some strength and continuity in the future, it has to create empathy with the Portuguese so that, if they ever want to destroy the PC, people defend it ”. In this sense, “historic trains are an excellent tool to create a relationship with the public.” Hence the recent commitment to Vouguinha, where the company recovered three “Neapolitan” wagons (built in Naples in the 1930s) to reinforce the supply of tourist trains.
Rehabilitating the two TPPs is neither difficult nor expensive. The two units were part of a batch of ten that in 2005 was prepared to be sold to Argentina, but ended up not following any vehicle because the country’s railways, having paid for their remodeling, did not pay for shipping.
Nuno Freitas estimates that 100,000 euros will be enough to put the wagons in their original state, just like when they transported thousands of passengers – the vast majority standing – at a time when the Sintra line was the most overloaded in Europe. .
Sorefame’s metal wagons may not have left much for those who traveled in degraded conditions on the Sintra line in the 1980s. But they were their brand image. Most of these trains have been modernized and now provide regional services on the North line, but a few dozen vehicles were demolished in August 2017, at Entroncamento. Among them was the UTE2001 that inaugurated the electrification of the Sintra line in 1957.
Now in Entroncamento there is no demolition. In its workshops, five abandoned self-propelled electric wagons have just been recovered on the Sintra line. Three have already been injected into the operation and two are expected to enter service in the coming weeks.
Since the current administration of the CP chose to recover the material that was supporting it, the Guifões, Contumil, Entroncamento and Barreiro workshops have already started up seven electric locomotives, three diesel locomotives, seven Schindler coaches, four Sorefame coaches, one self-propelled Allan and five UQEs for suburban people. Historic narrow-gauge wagons were also recovered: a 1910 vehicle and three “Neapolitan” wagons. In all, 46 vehicles were returned to the rails.
