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Comment by delta_p_delta_x | Hacker News Reader

I was about to point this out, too. This entire video is US-centric, which explains the dearth of passenger rail content. It completely skips many other types of passenger train. Many high-speed rail (Japanese Shinkansen, German ICE) and almost all rapid transit carriages are EMUs.

Double-decker cars are significantly more common in continental Europe. The TGV regularly runs Duplex[1] carriages on the LGV Sud-Est (Paris-Lyon) route, and Swiss Federal Railways has IC2000, IR Double Decker, and the LD Double Decker.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV_Duplex

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> Many high-speed rail (Japanese Shinkansen, German ICE) and almost all rapid transit carriages are EMUs.

Nit pick: The German ICE 1 and 2 series are pulled/pushed by a locomotive [1] that's a direct evolution of the BR 120 locomotive - the world's first electric locomotive to use solid-state converters [2].

As a result of that, the trains have different top speeds depending on the locomotive being on the front (faster) or rear (slower) end [3].

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICE_1#Triebk%C3%B6pfe_(Baureih...

[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/DB-Baureihe_120

[3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICE_2#Betrieb_bei_Seitenwind

The ICE1 being the longer version with locomotives ("Triebköpfe", literally "driving heads") at both ends, while the ICE2 is only half as long, with only one locomotive, and two of them can be coupled - the restriction you mentioned only applies to these.

...but actually the ones to first use this configuration were the French with their TGV, which was then copied by the Germans and Italians for their respective high-speed trains (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV#Allgemein). And then the Austrians implemented a "budget version" of a high-speed train with their Railjet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railjet) which uses an unmodified Taurus locomotive and a control car which has the same design as the locomotive.

> Double-decker cars are significantly more common in continental Europe.

And west of Chicago in the US. Amtrak runs double-decker cars west of Chicago and in fact Chicago's passenger rail service (Metra) is mostly (all?) double-decker.

My understanding is that tunnel clearance in the east is not sufficient for the double-decker cars.

I also see containers stacked two high and auto carriers that appear to be similar height and these probably also don't travel east in the US for the same reason.

Double deck cars do exist on the east but are configured differently. West of Chicago the floor is level with the door, east the double deck is achieved by having the lower floor halfway below. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C3_(railcar)

It’s not the lower/upper deck that is at different heights, it is the station platforms and doors. West coast has track-level platforms so the doors are on the lower deck, east coast has high-level platforms so the doors are above the bogies at the ends of the cars.

Caltrain’s Stadtler trains have both sets of doors, presumably for future standardization on high-level platforms.

Please find or make similar videos for other parts of the world. As a USian that mostly knew about all the types of railcars in this video, that would be awesome.

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