Talk:New Zealand DM class electric multiple unit

Preservation

There is a very real need to ensure that the English Electric red sets are preserved for future heritage services both in Wellington and elsewhere. Anyone interested in forming a trust to save the english electrics should contact light_of_the_goldendawn@hotmail.com Anywhere else in the world, and the Johnsonvill line would have been declared a heritage railway and the Red sets kept in use. However That is not to be. Lets ensure that as many red sets as possible can be saved so as to enable a future heritage service to be started up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.236.205.34 (talk) 22:40, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Tranz Metro have restored one of the EE units to heritage standards. That's more than adequate IMHO. Also, it makes little sense to turn a major urban railway into a heritage railway. That's what we've got Ferrymead or Silver Stream for. --Lholden (talk) 01:16, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

This is one of the silliest ideas I've heard in a long time, and I hang around on Railpage Australia, so I've heard plenty of unrealistic gunzel wet dreams. No other country in the world would even dream of converting a well-used commuter railway into a heritage railway! Hell, I commend Tranz Metro for the restoration job done on Cyclops; I can't name a single other operator in Oceania who have been that conscious of their heritage - the only comparison would be Yarra Trams in Melbourne continuing to operate a fleet of 54 W class trams, some of which are in a pretty sorry aesthetic state. In most countries, the Old Reds would've been withdrawn by the end of the 1980s. Wellington's network is a dilapidated joke. Take as a comparison Melbourne again. In Wellington, the operational Old Reds date from 1949. In Melbourne, the oldest rolling stock are 7 Hitachi sets from the 1970s, and they were in fact withdrawn a few years ago and only brought back to deal with high volumes of traffic and to cover for the new Siemens sets while they had teething problems. There are already plans afoot to replace the Comeng sets, of the same vintage of Wellington's EM/ET sets! Sydney, Brisbane, and Perth also make Wellington look very bad. The Old Reds, as much as I love them, are museum pieces and never should have made it to 1990 in regular service, let alone 2010. Let Ferrymead, Silverstream, et al. look after our heritage and leave the commuter railway to modern trains. - Axver (talk) 04:51, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Preservation for preservations sake makes no sense. How would it benefit anyone to acquire decommissioned rolling stock only to have it sit around in storage and deteriorate into a pile of rusting junk? If you don't also have the facilities and resources to restore what you have acquired and then display it somewhere where the public have access or operate it as a heritage service on your own line, what have you actually accomplished? As an example of the class, I think those heritage units in the ownership of TranzMetro and the CRS are quite adequate specimens. – Matthew25187 (talk) 11:25, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

There are three heritage red sets, Cyclops (DM556), Ferrymead (DM27, owned my Ferrymead Railway) and Phoenix (DM216), of the three only Phoenix hasn't have a single been headlamp - Palmeriain (talk) 13:29, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

DMs in olive or blue

How many DMs still retain the olive livery? I was under the impression a good number of them had been repainted blue, yet the caption of the leading photo currently says DM 147 is the only one in blue. This is clearly wrong, as the photo at the bottom of this page shows two sets in blue. - Axver 03:57, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

• DM147 is the only one that has the old-style Tranz Metro livery. All the new refurbished ones have the new logo.--カラム 08:57, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Three-Car units

Were two of the three-car units coupled together in rush hour on the Taita line (as two two-car units were coupled together on the Johnsonville line). I presume the platforms were long enough. If so it should be mentioned Hugo999 (talk) 06:53, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Uncited additions

There's been a number of uncited additions made to the page. Obviously I assume good faith, as the editor seems to be coming from the same IP address. However, things such as the scrapping date (May 2011) seem too specific to be correct. Should we start removing them on sight? --LJ Holden 01:19, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

At a minimum such comments should be tagged with {{fact}} and given, say a week, before summary removal. — Matthew25187 (talk) 10:43, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

DM 441 entry

Rather than start an edit war, I'd thought I'd say it here.

I'm not sure that the entry for DM 441 needs as much detail as it currently has. When I first removed this information, it was put back by the same anonymous user who first inserted it. All I've done with the restored information is correct grammar, but do we really need to say that DM 441 was at one stage out of service for overhaul? pcuser42 (talk) 02:03, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Well didn't you read the Preserved New Zealand Rolling Stock and look into Electric Locomotives Register, you shall find the information and belive me! DM 38 later 441 is at Belgrove Nelson, so it does exist,203.173.252.199 (talk) 02:04, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I've just checked David's NZ Rolling Stock Register site and it does have an entry for DM441 as being at Belgrove. This will be a hangover from when it was sold on Trademe, as the listing picture showed DM441 when it actually turned out the auction was for DM562. I am about to email David to let him know he needs to delete his record on the site for DM441, and please reference the following links to show that it is DM562 and trailer D2149 at Belgrove and not DM441 and D2818:

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8240/8517426893_d75d1ce92d_c.jpg - DM562 set at Belgrove, you can see the DM562 number on the side

http://www.flickr.com/photos/51227209@N03/8519456819/ - another view at Belgrove, you can read the number on the car as D2149

http://www.flickr.com/photos/deeargee/8386360214/in/set-72157632495076244/ - DM441 stripped and about to be scrapped at Hutt

Trailer D2826 has joined this pair (it is the trailer from DM182) although I have yet to see any photos of the 3 of them at Belgrove. Gosteamnz (talk) 02:55, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Class register

The actual classes for each carriage was recently removed from all entries (which caused other problems, but I won't go into that). However this means that readers who can't distinguish between a DM number and a D number will have no idea which is which - perhaps we need to split the entries up into two tables? Thoughts? pcuser42 (talk) 03:47, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it was (is) a bit of a mess. I would split the two classes into separate tables - unlike the EM/ETs, they aren't permanently coupled together --LJ Holden 03:54, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I've now fixed the table (fully!) and put the colours back. --LJ Holden 09:50, 23 May 2013 (UTC)