Renfe 446/447 1.5:1 Scale

Renfe 446/447 1.5:1 Scale

The Renfe Series 446, together with the Renfe series 447 are a group of electric units designed to offer effective commuter services. Its design began to be planned in the early 1980s when the commuter service began to gain great prominence in cities like Madrid and the units that were offering these services, mainly units of the series 440, were beginning to be insufficient. Since an exclusive train was going to be designed to offer these services, it was decided to provide them with the needs required for this service, a service with multiple stops over short distances and a large movement of passengers. In this way they were given a great acceleration capacity, penalizing the maximum speed.

The 446 series, with a very innovative design for the 1989 Renfe trains, offers 2400 kW of power that allows an acceleration of 1 m/s² when starting but its maximum speed is 100 km/h. Of the 3 cars available, the two at the ends, both with a driver's cab, are motorized and only the one in the middle is a trailer. Each of the cars has 3 pairs of double-leaf doors for quick entry and exit of travelers. One of the big drawbacks of these units, which has earned them the nickname dodotis, is that originally they did not have toilets in any of the cars.

The 447 series offers a design similar to that of the 446 series, since the different aesthetic and safety changes were made at the same time; so much so that externally they are only differentiated by the letters of the car numbering: in the 446 series the letter M is in white, the R in red and in the 447 series both letters are in yellow and of a smaller exterior width. 9 cm of the 447 (not visible to the naked eye) but the performance of these two units is very different. This new series was equipped with innovative three-phase asynchronous motors that offer even better performance than the 446, with greater acceleration, greater tractor effort and, in addition to all this, the maximum speed is also higher, reaching 120 km/h. Like the 446, each unit has 3 cars. The two at the ends, both with a driving cabin, are motorized and only the middle one is a trailer. Each of the cars has 3 pairs of double-leaf doors for quick entry and exit of travelers. In this series a vacuum toilet was added.

Both 446 and 447 can circulate coupled in normal service with some limitations in traction and braking.

Currently 446 only provide service in some areas of Spain: These units can be found circulating in the centers of Madrid, Segovia, Seville, Córdoba, San Sebastián, and Bilbao, usually running their services on lines in which the distance between stations is 1-2 kilometers or even less, this being one of the reasons why the 446 units stopped circulating in the centers of Barcelona, ​​Santander and Valencia (commuter networks where the stations are more frequently separated, so that the 447 and Civias are a more appropriate material for these cores).

447 units circulate in the suburban centers of Alicante, Cantabria, Catalunya, Valencia, San Sebastián, Gerona and Tarragona and in regional services in Catalonia. They also handle other regional services, and until 2018 there were some units of this series on the Madrid commuter network.

446 are planned to be retired by 2025 and be replaced by the new Alstom and CAF commuter units