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BT Einheitswagen IV

Even today, the Einheitswagen IV form a prominent part of Swiss rail transport. But before we get to the many SBB carriages, the two private railways in eastern Switzerland, SOB and BT, first get their EW IV.

Hintergründe:
The history of the Einheitswagen began at the end of the 1970s. After the recently delivered EW III wagons were not really able to hold their own in everyday operation, SBB and the industry began to work on a new generation.
This time, the idea was to move away from aluminium construction. Inspired by the Eurofima coaches built at the time, the EW IVs were created, which SBB ordered in large quantities. BLS soon followed suit. But that's a story for another mod.

Our story begins a good 10 years later. Südostbahn and Bodensee Toggenburg Bahn are looking for new air-conditioned rolling stock to replace the equipment from the 1960s on the St. Gallen-Lucerne express train service. However, a disappointing response to an enquiry from the industry was that they were working to capacity with orders from SBB and BLS and could only offer EW IVs from the current delivery series rather than new developments.

As a result, BT procured eight carriages of the new Einheitswagen type. The new carriages were immediately deployed on the Voralpen-Express, where they were mixed with the SOB carriages to form five-car trains. The trains were each made up of one EW IV first class, three EW IV second class coaches and one bistro coach of an older design. Locomotives from all three participating railways were used as locomotives, the BT provided its new Re 4/4 91-96 (Re 456), the SBB the classic Re 4/4 II and the SOB initially provided its Re 4/4 III, later the Re 446.
If more space was required, the train could be reinforced with older standard coaches from the three operators, but this then required a pushing locomotive on the SOB's 50‰ steep ramps.

As the five wagons were increasingly no longer sufficient and the pushing service was uneconomical, the SOB and BT decided to replace the EW IVs, which were too heavy, with modernised unit wagons I after less than 10 years. With the Revvivos, the train could be operated as a six-car shuttle train from 1999, which significantly simplified operations.

BT then sold three of its wagons to BLS, which continued to run in BT colours for a few more years. The remaining five wagons went to SBB. After BLS also parted with its EW IV in 2004, all 8 carriages are now back together at SBB

Two years later, the name Bodensee Toggenburg Bahn disappeared from the Swiss railway world when BT merged with SOB to form today's SOB.


Content:

Options:

• Display of bicycles in the bicycle parking spaces (needs Fahrradständer und Mountainbike by Maverick2002)
• Disable start/end year

A big thank you to:

• UG, who built the vanilla modell which served as a starting point
  
• Maverick2002, who made the bikes for the cargo
  
• Mark_86 who loaned me his advertisments
• Hans Dampf for the Ingame Screenshots

Complaints please here[www.transportfever.net].