Some train, bus and tram photos from the Nordic countries

After Oslo and Bergen, we were booked for around three weeks in very reasonably priced accommodation at The Annex +1 in Copenhagen, which was a round a three minute walk to Copenhagen’s central station (Københavns Hovedbanegård). I have a 93 year old aunt in Copenhagen and my cousin there, plus another cousin in Sønderborg in the southern part of Denmark (Sønderborg is actually partly on the Jutland mainland and partly on the island of Als). We used the public transport options extensively around Copenhagen, and trains to and from Sønderborg, but no buses in the latter, although we had used a regional bus to get there on a previous visit in 2022.

Some of the photos inevitably include bicycles – there are rather a lot of them around Copenhagen! We used the Metro light rail, buses, regional trains and S-tog trains, plus a bus with no wheels, the Harbour Bus, which is actually a ferry. Many of the buses are electric, and routes are often allocated buses of all the same type (rather like London Transport of old), but even so there were a few inyerlopers and substitutions evident. The route we used the most was the 7A as it ran past my aunt’s place. That had MAN electric buses allocated, but there were at least two BYDs spotted on it while we were there. Also, quite a few of the MANs didn’t sport the red corners.

The buses are colour coded, using a base bright yellow colour, with diagonally opposite corners for most of the ‘special’ types, with one exception, the 5C.

Red corners - indicate buses on the main trunk ‘A’ routes, branded ‘A bus’.
Blue corners - indicate buses on express longer distance routes, branded ‘S bus’.
Green corners - indicate something I haven’t worked out – they are usually on ‘E’ or ‘R’ routes.
Turquoise and Cityline branding - are unique to the 5C route, which serves Kastrup Airport. These buses have larger areas of turquoise and smaller areas of yellow than any other routes.
Plain yellow - applies to all other normal routes.

The trains are divided into two systems: the local red S-tog trains that run on 1650V DC, and the Regional/Intercity train lines that run on 25kV AC, but also serve some local lines.

The Metro light rail system uses articulated vehicles built in two batches but all to the same basic design and are driverless. They use a bottom-contact, raised third rail system at 750V DC.

Anyway, I’ll start some of the photos and if necessary spread them over several posts. I’ll also include a few with the station buildings in as they are also of interest.

These are dated from 26th to 28th January 2025. Mrs SRman also appears in a few!

More from Copenhagen.

I should add that we found the information systems were very good on board most forms of transport and in the stations.

These next ones are from 28th to 30th January 2025.

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Source

More from Copenhagen.

These next ones are from 30th January to 2nd February 2025.

The green corner Volvo bus was on a blue corner ‘S’ route 300S. There were a few others as well, and we caught the greeen corner buses on both occasions that we used the 300S from Lyngby to Buddinge, on our way to the Togcenter Gentofte model shop.

Lyngby will also have a new light rail system going through it, still being built but already with test runs on some sections occurring.

Peter, my cousin, took us to the Museum of Technology and Science near Helsingør, and there was an old Nesa trolleybus in there, so I have included that here too.  
 

Skipping February 3rd for the time being, as we did an excursion into Sweden on that day, these are a few more from Copenhagen on 4th to 6th February 2025.


This next set is from 12th February to 15th February: the missing time is because we went to Sønderborg between the 7th and 10th, then to Sweden again on 11th, so these dates are the last for my Copenhagen transport photos.

That last post got truncated due to my hitting the daily upload limit of 100MB, so the rest will have to wait for another day.

What's the bus with what looks like a pantograph in 14th picture of the first of these posts Jeff?

Ed said

What's the bus with what looks like a pantograph in 14th picture of the first of these posts Jeff?

From “Post #291,999”, 7th April 2025, 5:50 pm

That's a VDL electric artic, a type used exclusively on route 2A. We used that route a couple of times to get to the opera house, and also stayed on board one day to ride to the other terminus, where they had two of these fast charging points.

Looks a bit like the bendy buses they had in London, which I believe have now been replaced due to safety concerns
 

Ed said

Looks a bit like the bendy buses they had in London, which I believe have now been replaced due to safety concerns
 

From “Post #292,004”, 8th April 2025, 8:08 am

Those were Mercedes Citaro artics, which in right-hand drive form had a somewhat annoying habit of bursting into flames. The left-hand drive versions had a different arrangement of something in the fuel feed mechanism for some reason, so didn't suffer the same problems.

London's streets seem to have been less able to accommodate the articulated buses than many other places. We have a few articulated buses in Melbourne, but they aren't all that common. I saw many in Hamburg, Oslo, Lund and Helsinki, to name a few, with the ultimate extreme being in Malmö, which photos I haven't got to for posting yet, but here's one of their van Hool integrals, below.

Copenhagen had only a few routes with artics, with most of the longer diesel buses being rigid 3-axle types. The 5C mentioned earlier has diesel Scania artics, and the 2A as per our discussion has the VDL electrics.

Resuming the set from 12th February to 15th February: the missing time is because we went to Sønderborg between the 7th and 10th, then to Sweden again on 11th, so 12th to 15th dates are the last for my Copenhagen transport photos.

I also have a YouTube video compilation of railway trains, trips and environs here: https://youtu.be/x6tpsgh2jO8 .

Lyngby Station features in the first few photos, soon after it snowed lightly. Then the cold and windy interchange at Buddinge Station where we swapped from the 300S to a 4A (or on the previous trip, a 6A). I find Flintholm Station to be a particularly interesting one, with two S tog lines on different levels and the Metro M1/M2 line at the higher level also, plus the bus station at the lower level.

Nice video Jeff 

Second attempt at the trip we did to Sønderborg to meet up with my cousin Lisa and her partner. We caught trains to and from Sønderborg using our Eurail passes, but i took the precaution of reserving seats both ways. We travelled there on Friday February 7th, and returned on Monday 10th (my birthday!), having the entire weekend free to do things with Lisa and René, which was good considering they are both still working. René used to own a restaurant and is an excellent chef, cooking us a wonderful traditional Danish Christmas dinner on Saturday evening - not entirely out of place seeing as Christmas lights were still up in the streets there.

Unlike the previous visit we had in 2022, we didn't use any buses this time, but we did pass the bus station a few times.

The train trip to Sønderborg required us to change trains at Kolding, which had a 10 minute swap over time, using the same platform. While waiting for our connec tion, one of the temporary Hamburg sets drew in on the next platform on its way to Copenhagen, with the usual DSB EB class Vectron electric at the front. Our trains for both legs were the DSB IR4 EMUs. For the return journey, we weren't required to change trains, but to my surprise it was an IC3 DMU, even though the lines are electrified all the way. this train went to Fredericia first, where an IR4 EMu was added to what became the rear of our unit as it reverses there to continue towards Copenhagen. Journey times are around 3h 20m, give or take a few minutes.

The buses through Sønderborg, both the yellow local buses and the regional blue buses are run by Sydtrafik. Sunday services seemed to be around 4 hours apart for most of them, according to the timetables I looked at.

There will be a few more photos from Sønderborg in the next post.


 



 

The remaining photos from our Sønderborg trip.

Sønderborg's station is rather windswept and exposed, and is on the mainland side of the harbour, whereas the town centre is on the island of Als. The two sides are linked by two main road bridges, with the older one having a lifting section to allow taller boats to pass through.

The IC4 DMUs outside of Fredericia are in poor external condition. These unreliable units are being sold off before the much older, but more reliable IC3 units, and can be seen shunted aside in quite a few locations. A few are still in use. The IC4 units have a top speed of 200 kph, where the rest of DSBs units are limited to 180 kph. I have only ridden in one IC4 unit and it seemed rather reluctant to get moving, shuddering and juddering into life before it got underway properly.

During our stay in Copenhagen, we did two day trips into Sweden. I had decided I would like to have a look at Lund, which is only one stop beyond Malmö, so around an hour's travel from Copenhagen. We caught the usual Øresundståg trains over the Øresund bridge. Once in Lund we wandered around for a while admiring the old buildings, cathedral, and university grounds, before buying some tickets to travel on the public transport buses and light rail. All of the green local buses were electric and I think they were all MANs. In a reversal compared to Denmark, the yellow buses were for the regional services.

We returned to Copenhagen in the late evening via Øresundståg train and the bridge again.

This was on February 3rd, 2025.  We had blue skies and a lovely sunset, but there was a strong wind chill factor making it feel much colder than the actual temperature.

I did take some video clips too, but I have not yet processed them.