Edmonton Radial Railway Society
Duwag-Siemens JM6D Prototype #601
This page is dedicated to car #601, a street running light rail vehicle built by Duwag with electronics from Siemens in 1970. The car was originally built for Hannover, Germany as a prototype under the model "JM6D". The car was built with street or low height platform loading in mind. Car #601 was withdrawn from Hannover service in 1975 as production units took over operations. The transit system in Vancouver run by BC Transit was interested in opening a light rail line at the same time. Plans were made for this prototype car to be shipped across the Pacific Ocean for trail purposes. Though light rail never did emerge in Vancouver, instead automated light rail transit (Skytrain) was chosen. Thus the car sat idle for a number of years in British Columbia. The ERRS took advantage of the opportunity to aquire this valuable historical peice of equipement. Since the driverless Expo Skytrain line opened in 1986, car #601 was essentially of no use to BC Transit and in 1987, ERRS bought the car from BC Transit and had it shipped to Edmonton where it would make it's new home at D.L. Macdonald garage, the LRT facility for Edmonton Transit System. For the next decade, ERRS, Siemens and ETS all helped in making 601 rail worthy to run in Edmonton. This took a great deal of work and time, certainly a great accomplishment for all those involved. On September 13th, 1998. The car made its first public appearance since it was withdrawn from Hannover in 1975. Car #601 with a decade of hard work behind it ran on the LRT line of ETS's as a chartered rail vehicle. Car #601 now regularly operates on the ERRS High Level Bridge line. Part of the reason why so much dedication was put into making this car rail worthy once again was because of the similarities this car shared with the 37 Duwag/Siemens U2 cars that ETS operates. This is a compressed version of the full story of Car #601 provided on ERRS's website.
Below is a collection of recent photos of car #601 in service. Click on the thumbnail to see a larger version.
| Thumbnail | Description (All photos on High Level Bridge line) | Date (M/D/Y) |
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601 seen heading northbound at the Grandin stop. | 8/10/2005 |
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601 seen arriving at Jasper Avenue stop, the terminus for the north end of the line High Level bridge line. | 8/10/2005 |
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601 seen laying over at the Jasper Avenue stop before heading south back to Strathcona. | 8/10/2005 |
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601 seen crossing the High Level bridge while southbound headed to Strathcona. | 8/10/2005 |
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601, head on seen at 103rd Street stop, the southern terminus for the High Level bridge line. | 10/11/2005 |
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601 seen arriving at Jasper Avenue stop. | 10/11/2005 |
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601 seen laying over at the 103rd Street stop before heading north to Jasper Avenue. | 10/11/2005 |
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601's cab controls are seen in this photo. | 8/10/2005 |
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601's interior, you can see that much of the general shape was adopted onto the U2 interior, including other minor details that cannot be seen in this photo. | 8/10/2005 |
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The motorman's view facing southbound while on the High Level Bridge, we were actually going north when I took this photo. | 10/11/2005 |