The new trains are expected to go into service later this year, 100 years after Melbourne’s first electric trains started running.
Their official name is the not-very-catchy High Capacity Metro Trains, or HCMTs for short.
A friend’s son suggested what I think is a far better name, given the anniversary:
Centennial Trains.
What do you think?
For comparison, Sydney has the Millenium trains, which entered service in 2002.
11 replies on ““HCMT” isn’t a very catchy name for the new trains. How about “Centennials”?”
How do we get this campaign going? Write a letter to the transport minister? A change.org petition?
Hopefully it doesn’t get delayed though.
From the photo it looks like you can barely even see the screen because of the angle of the front of the train. That’s going to be annoying if you actually need to know which line the train is running on.
@number the good news is that there will be screens on the sides of the carriage like the Xtrapolis trains have so that way the destination will be more clearer.
If I remember correctly these trains were originally supposed to arrive in late 2018, then they delayed it to mid 2019, then mid 2019 arrived and now they’ve delayed it to late 2019 … we’ll see if they actually show up by the end of the year.
@number, the front display is obscured from ground level, but should be fine from platform level.
I’m trying to make “Evo” stick around the office.
In Melbourne, apart from Xtrapolis, we have always named trains by their manufacturer. Hitachi, Comeng, Siemens.
It is only fitting that we call these trains Downers.
Centennial is a good name for the new trains, we definitely need a train name better than 4 letters like HCMT.
I’m not too fussed on what they are going to be called. Just hope they accelerate away from the station smoothly and quickly unlike the X’Trapolis we have now.
I hate going to a city with “real” metro trains, as I get depressed when I come home to this large slow suburban submarines.
Is it just me, or does larger trains seem like a step backwards rather than more frequent small trains?
One that’s always bugged me about the design is the deep recession of the destination display. Would look much better flush or at least nearer the external chassis.
Are we not going to get PTV liveried seats in these new trains?
My understanding is, the delay is due to software issues. I do not what part the software issues are playing up on. But if it where anything like the brakes, we sure need to take our time before doing their first run of.
Also, I am not sure if the Pakenham east depot is finished yet. I did get a signaling update from SRSV, which does have an update, but, have lost the copy.
The fourth HCMT was ready at Newport weeks ago, I do not know if it has been sent to Pakenham East yet.