TCDD TVS2000

The TÜVASAŞ 2000 or more commonly known as TVS2000 is a series of intercity railcars built by TÜVASAŞ for the Turkish State Railways between 1992 and 2002. They were built in order to revive TCDD's failing image in the early 1990s, for use on the Capital Express. Today they are the most common railcars in Turkey.

History

TCDD's image was failing greatly in the early 1990s and its Ankara−İstanbul mainline was losing market-share to roads. People mostly chose buses over rail to travel because TCDD's fleet of railcars were aging quickly. The railways' premier train, at the time, the Fatih Express was using Black-Red Intercity cars, which were noisy, uncomfortable and without air conditioning which made the interior very hot during the summer times. During winter times, the steam heater on board the cars always broke down or malfunctioned causing problems. To make things even worse, a highway was opened between İstanbul and Ankara decreasing travel by rail considerably. The railways needed to improve travel or they would lose a lot more customers to roads.

The solution was the operation of a brand new train between the two cities: The Capital Express. For this train brand new, luxurious railcars would be needed so, TCDD ordered a batch of new TVS2000 railcars from TÜVASAŞ in 1991. The TVS2000s proved to be successful very quickly. TCDD's bad image started to improve almost instantly and the İstanbul-Ankara main line was getting increased travel. Because of the success of the railcars, TCDD ordered even more of them and soon started to replace their entire fleet with them.

TÜVASAŞ has modernized intercity and regional cars to meet TVS2000 standards between 2002 and 2006.^[1][2]

Types

The TVS2000 currently has coaches, sleepers, diners, couchettes and generator cars. The first to be introduced were the coaches in 1992. The diners and sleepers were introduced in 1998 and couchettes were introduced a few years later along with the generator cars. The State railways have already replaced most of their intercity fleet with the TVS2000s and they should replace all of them in a few years. In 2006 TÜVASAŞ introduced new TVS2000 Conference cars and Parlor cars, however these cars are used only for charters.

Usage

The first train to be equipped with the TVS2000 Capital Express, running between İstanbul and Ankara. After 1998 most overnight trains were equipped with them. Today most intercity trains are equipped with the TVS2000s.

References