Product Features and Details
Information about the model
With the Type 39 express train carriages, the Reichsbahn (German State Railway) aimed to finally usher in the era of high-speed rail travel and increase passenger train speeds. To achieve this, the factors that caused air turbulence in previous carriage designs had to be reduced. As with the Type 35 carriages, welding technology was used extensively in the Type 39. However, the designers' main focus was on achieving the smoothest possible outer shell. The areas under the frame and around the bogies, in particular, had previously generated significant air resistance, so it was logical to cover these parts with side panels. The eponymous skirt was thus invented. The design also featured other sophisticated details for its time. For example, the entrance doors were positioned on the outside. An elaborate folding mechanism ensured that the doors opened together with the side panels, despite the pivot point being located low inside the carriage. Furthermore, the side window frames were flush with the outer panel. To accommodate the necessary window recess, the carriages were widened by approximately 40 mm below the sill. The German Reichsbahn planned to acquire over 1,000 carriages in various configurations. However, due to the war, only 543 production vehicles were delivered between 1939 and 1940, comprising 103 AB4ü-38, 310 C4ü-38, 65 ABC4ü-39, and 65 BC4ü-39 models. Parallel to the development of the passenger carriages, Mitropa commissioned a revision of the WR4ü-35 design from the railway carriage industry. Unlike the passenger carriages, however, this did not result in a completely new design. Instead, the outward-positioned entrance doors were adapted, and the frame skirt was added. The inward-set windows and the different window height were retained. Due to the late delivery of the carriages, their use was rather infrequent until the wartime suspension of express train services. Many carriages were therefore stored in supposedly safe railway stations to protect them from destruction. That this wasn't always successful is evidenced by the numerous carriages that were written off as war losses. The vehicles that survived the war unscathed largely remained in West Germany. Besides some confiscations by the occupying powers, the German Federal Railway (DB) refurbished most of the carriages for its newly established F-train network. At the time, these skirted carriages were the most modern and comfortable passenger carriages on German railways. With the increasing deliveries of the new 26.4 m carriages from the second half of the 1950s onward, the DB increasingly used the carriages in regular express trains. It would be until the mid-1970s before the last skirted carriages were finally withdrawn from the DB's rolling stock and relegated to reserve depots for military and troop transport.The carriages that remained with the Deutsche Reichsbahn Ost (East German State Railway) were incorporated into modernization programs of the DR Ost (East German State Railway) in the early 1960s and converted into so-called modernization carriages. In addition, some vehicles remain with the ÖBB (Austrian Federal Railways) and the SNCF (French National Railway).
Model details
- Metal axle holder
- True-to-scale axle bearing covers
- Brake shoes in wheel plane
- Extra axle brake linkage
- Multi-part brake system
- Interior design that accommodates various options
- Complete replica of the vehicle floor
- Interior lighting installed
- Short-coupling kinematics
