>>1204777>That's interesting. I always thought more standardization, cooperation and compatibility would make maintenance of urban railways much cheaper and easier. There are dozens of different gauges, voltages, electric systems, manufacturers, spare parts etc. in the world of trams and metros today. Sometimes you have to buy a whole new fleet of trains just because the manufacturer went out of business and there's no way to get fitting spare parts anymore.Again, it's my guess because a lot of things were just manufactured in the USSR and then sent out to the Eastern Bloc, China and NK. The result was that the GDR ended up using a lot of Soviet made parts which were then used in East German made vehicles, or the vehicles were originally Soviet made, with parts made in East Germany to make them compatible.
One example was the old Deutsche Reichsbahn Baureihe 130, which was a locomotive made in Soviet Ukraine, and was then sent out to the different Eastern Bloc countries. The GDR got them, and they had to do a lot of conversions to make the locomotive even work in the GDR. First it had to be reguaged into Standard Gauge. The next issue was that the train was designed to use the SA3 coupling system, which was not in use in the GDR. This meant that the coupling had to be replaced with the Chain and Buffer system, which causes issues as hook could swivel as it was attached to the same point as the SA3 coupler. Next issue was that the electric motors had to be modified and the generator replaced to produce and accept 15kV 16 2/3 Hz AC, because the train heating and electric system was loco supplied, unlike the Russian standard which supplied electric power from the loco, but each carriage featured its own heater. Final issue was the sound insulation which was lacking on the original Soviet design because they didn't give a shit about how loud the diesel engine is, meanwhile, in the GDR, the loud engine caused serious issues for people living next to the tracks.
