SNCF X 5500

The X 5500, with the prototypes X 5010 and X 5011, called the unified 150 hp, is a former SNCF railcar put into service from 1948. The series of two prototypes followed by fifty-one light railcars was created within the plan to rationalise the fleet around large series of unified railcars and was meant to serve secondary lines. It was followed by the X 5800, differing only in minor points, which entered service from 1953. The closing of many secondary lines and the replacement of the X 5500 by more powerful and comfortable railcars, above all the X 3800, made these highly specialised machines disappear from the SNCF in 1977. The first prototype, X 7029, renumbered X 5010, came out in March 1947 and the second in August 1947; the fifty-one series cars were ordered between August 1946 and August 1948 and delivered from April 1950 to February 1951. The railcar is 16.040 m long over buffers and weighs 23.5 tonnes loaded, with a single driving position in a raised kiosk on the roof. The first 26 have a Renault 561 engine of 150 hp and the others a Saurer BXDS of 160 hp, driving only one of the four axles, and their small engine earned them the nickname Mobylettes; low diesel consumption gives them nearly 1,000 km of range.