Monday, 23 March 2020

Electric Car T1000 Series: "Little Dancer Ua" in Toyohashi

Set T1001 of the electric car Toyotetsu T1000 series (October, 2016)

I'm currently very busy at work and cannot visit railways in Tokyo and the other areas. Instead, I'm going to continue to show you the old photographs, which I recently rediscovered on my hard disk.

The electric car T1000 series is a type of LRT (light rail transit). The definition of LRT is not clear, but it is typically an urban low-floor tram with a low noise level in Japan. The T1000 series is the first LRT on the Azumada main line of Toyohashi Railway (Toyotetsu). Only one set was built by Alna Sharyo in Osaka City in 2008. It is an articulated electric car that is composed of 3 bodies (T1001A-T1001C-T1001C) and two trucks. Its total length is 16.2 meters with a riding capacity of 76 passengers. The body is white colored and has a stripe with a blue to green colored gradation. The electric control system is an IGBT-VVVF (insulated gate bipolar transistor-variable frequency drive) inverter with two 85kW induction motors.

The T1000 series is frequently called "Little Dancer Ua" by Alna Sharyo. This nickname derived from the "dancing" image of the vehicle and the "little" size. "Ua" is a type of Little Dancer group. "U" has a floating body (T1000C) and "a" is for 1,067 millimeter-wide track. His (or her) brothers namely Little Dancer S, L, A3, A5, U and C2 are also seen in many cities throughout Japan.

Little Dancer Ua is a new symbol in Toyohashi City.

Side view of set T1001 of the electric car Toyotetsu T1000 series (October, 2016)