London DLR P86 & P89 Trains In Germany

London Docklands Light Railway P86 and P89 trains in Essen, Germany as filmed in 1994 and 2012.

The opening scene was filmed at West India Quay station. All other footage is in Essen and shows some of the locations served by the former London transports, plus a driver's eye ride along some of the street tramway section of line.

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Below is more information about the P86 and P89 trains, their doors and why they came to Essen.

The P86 trains were the first type of rolling stock that was used on the DLR when it opened in 1987.

In 1991 they were sold to Essen in Germany. This was because even before the DLR opened it was decided to build a link to Bank Underground station - and the P86 trains were built for a railway which was wholly above ground and therefore did not meet the very stringent fire safety regulations for travelling underground.

The British P89 trains were built to comply with tunnel fire safety requirements but ended up being sold (in 1995) because of two different reasons.

Firstly, the law required emergency exits at the train ends and whilst single train units were seen as complying with this requirement (even though they did not have end doors!) twin units definitely did not - because the lack of end doors meant that it was not possible to walk through from one end of the complete train to the other end.

The other reason why the P89s ended up being sold was that they were not compatible with the higher capacity automated train control system that was going to be installed on the DLR. This new signalling system was needed because the DLR was expanding so much that the original system was no longer suitable. Perhaps in itself this would not have been seen as an impediment, as the B90 trains also needed converting to the newer signalling system, but the B90s were built with end doors - so that when two or three were coupled together passengers could (in an emergency) walk through from one to another. However, with EVAG also wanting the P89 trains and with their replacement meaning that the DLR would only have one type of rolling stock (said with maintenance spares in mind, etc) so in the mid 1990s the P89s went to Essen too.

(Possibly this was the first time ever an automated railway had been converted from one system to another?)

In Essen the P86 trains were fitted with pantographs, drivers cabs etc., and placed into service on route U18 and then also U11, which were wholly "railway" type routes. In this format they retained their DLR red and blue livery. The P89 trains were similarly converted, plus also equipped with track brakes so that they could be used on route U17 which includes sections of street tramway. In addition they were also repainted in Essen yellow and blue livery. In addition, the street tramstops on route U17 were rebuilt to have high level platforms as used by the DLR trains and Essen's all other Light Rail trains when not operating in tramway mode. I feel sure that this also resulted in one little used tramstop being closed, because it did not have protected passenger islands / was somewhere where the trams stopped in the middle of the road and all other traffic also had to stop.

In circa 2005 the P86 trains started being made street compatible and in addition were renumbered and repainted in Essen livery. One of the reasons for this would have been that route U11 was extended over a section of street tramway, which meant that P86s were no longer suitable for that route.

This means that at no time did DLR trains in DLR livery travel through the streets of Essen as street trams, which from the point of view of someone from London is a shame. However, when one remembers that the P89s were built here in the UK (by BREL) so its still nice to have British built trams being used in Germany!

This fleet list shows the present-day situation with the former DLR trains in Essen

http://bahn-deutschland.de.tl/Docklan...

btw, the link below (to the District Dave forum) suggests that whilst the first of the P89s had the same twin inward folding bat-wing doors as the P86 trains, they were soon converted to single leaf sliding doors, whilst later P89 units were fitted with single leaf doors from the outset. It also refers to when a P86 DLR train did travel underground - to Bank - and also includes other interesting information.

http://districtdavesforum.co.uk/threa...