Elettro-motrici

The ALe.792 and ALe.882 were 2 series of FS light EMU built between 1936 and 1937 by Breda. The two  series differed only in the number of seats, 79 on the ALe.792 and 88 on the ALe.882.

These series are the first in the first generation of FS EMU.

In 1935 it was very clear that the 'Littorine' i.e. the Fiat DMU were extremely popular and wherever they where deployed they ha excellent results.

So the FS though to extend the concept of railcar to the lines that allowed electric traction.

FS received proposals from all major manufacturer of trains in Italy. They chose the project proposed by Breda.  This had high similarity to the ETR200, the high speed train that was the big badge of honor for Italian railways.

The project had also excellent propaganda potential: the commoner could travel in a train that was similar to the train of the rich, the fastest on Earth.

I love the esthetics of ETR200 and so I very much like this EMU.

The model, as usual, is made of several parts 3D printed in different resins. The body shell is printed in trasparent resin while the rest (chassis, bogies, motor shaft and gears) is in black resin.

Pantographs are realised in flat FDM and assembled. 

This type of electric multiple units (EMU) belong to the second generation of this train type at FS. Only 73 of them were made in the period 1949-1964

These units were coupled with the Le840 trailers (identical in appearance, besides the lack of pantographs).

A peculiarity of these EMUs is that some of the trailer units were fitted with AC pantographs and AC-DC converters so that they could form, together with the DC powered  Ale840 units, multi-system complexes (in Italian 'complessi bicorrente'). These complexes were used in fast connections in the Piedmont-Liguria area, where the three-phase dual conductor overhead lines were active till 1976.

The possibility to realise such complex was my main motivation in picking such EMU.

The CAD model was drawn in N scale, but I printed only 2 re-scaled shells in Z.

FS ALe 601 series was a family of EMU that together with the traction unit Ale601 included several types of  trailers Le 360, Le 420, Le 480, Le 481, Le 530, Le 601, Le 700, and Le 780 all in the same form factor.

The family  was designed to carry out fast and luxury passenger services, something they managed to do extremely well from 1961 to the early years of 2000s.

They were designed from the outset to travel at at least 180 km/h, in fact they could do much more than that. In 1985, almost 25 years after their initial delivery, a set of three Ale601 traveled at 285 km/h on the Florence-Rome railway., demonstrating how good was  the design.

I always loved these EMU and I sporadically traveled on them always enjoying the comfort of the ride.