Philippine Railway Historical Society News and History!: 2011 RANDOM RAILCAR IMAGES

Tuesday, September 15, 2026

2011 RANDOM RAILCAR IMAGES - PART 1

We put a huge amount of work into our many social media activities.
Would you like to give some encouragement here?

---------------------------------------------------------
If you find an interest in non-railways topics in the Philippines, you are invited to check out our
Semi-Retired Foamer Travel Blog
Here we cover all different topics from around the Philippines and elsewhere, and have the huge 'Jeepney 3000' project still ongoing.
---------------------------------------------------------

Welcome Back to the Wonderful World of Philippine Railway Railcar Chaos.

Welcome back yet again, Philippine railway fans, haters, casual observers, and those of questionable mental stability who have somehow decided that looking at old photographs of Philippine National Railways rollingstock is a perfectly sensible way to spend their afternoon.

We have now reached the final instalment looking at the PNR railcar fleet as it appeared in 2011, and by this stage the railway was entering one of those periods where, on paper, things appeared to be getting considerably better.

Naturally, being PNR, this was the point at which you should have become suspicious.

By 2011, all six of the new Hyundai Rotem diesel multiple-unit sets were in service. The fleet consisted of 18 stainless-steel cars, arranged as six three-car sets, and they had entered service in July 2009 as part of the efforts to rehabilitate the Metro Commuter Line. They were quite a significant addition at the time, being the first genuinely new passenger rollingstock ordered for PNR since the 1970s.

The Rotems were part of the rather grander rehabilitation plans being pursued during the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo administration. The original proposal was actually for 21 cars, enough for seven three-car sets, but budgetary reality — that perennial enemy of railway development — reduced this to 18 cars and six sets. The project was tied into the first phase of the Northrail–Southrail Linkage Project and was financed with Korean funding.

And they certainly looked the part.

Compared with some of the elderly locomotives, coaches and multiple units still soldiering around Manila, the Rotems looked as though they had arrived from another railway entirely. Stainless steel bodies, modern interiors, diesel-hydraulic propulsion and a considerably more contemporary appearance gave PNR something that actually looked like a proper modern commuter train.

For once, the railway appeared to be receiving something that hadn't already had three previous owners, spent twenty years sitting in a siding, and arrived accompanied by a story beginning with the words "Well, apparently it still works."

The first Rotem sets arrived in Manila in 2009 aboard the Asian King, and because the rail connection into the port was no longer available, the brand-new railcars had to be transferred by road to Tutuban. Yes, you read that correctly: brand-new railway vehicles arriving by ship, only to discover that the railway infrastructure required to conveniently move railway vehicles from the port was no longer available. Because apparently retaining useful railway connections to railway facilities would have been far too sensible.

The six sets initially found work on the Metro Commuter services, including the Tutuban–Alabang operation, and for a while they represented the modern face of PNR. They were intended to replace some of the older stock and, at least initially, helped push the locomotive-hauled services further into the background.

And therein lay the problem for someone like me.

From the point of view of a railfan trying to photograph the history of Philippine railways, 2011 was becoming a slightly less exciting proposition. The old locomotives and assorted survivors of previous generations were still around, but the shiny new Rotems were increasingly becoming the railway's preferred answer to the question of how to move commuters around Manila.

Six identical three-car sets.

Wonderful for the passengers. That air-conditioning was flamin awesome in the heat and humidity.

Slightly less wonderful for the bloke standing beside the line with a camera hoping that something weird, ancient, noisy and preferably covered in oil would appear.

Of course, history has a rather entertaining habit of making modern railway equipment look considerably less modern after a few years.

The Rotems would eventually suffer from accidents, damage and maintenance issues, with a number of vehicles being lost from service. Two sets were refurbished in 2019 and received a new livery, but even that temporary renaissance couldn't ultimately save the fleet from the general decline of the Metro Manila PNR operation.

There were also some rather spectacular examples of the railway's continuing ability to find increasingly imaginative ways of damaging trains. One Rotem was involved in a collision with a Coca-Cola truck at Tanyag in 2011, while another suffered serious damage in the 2022 crane incident associated with construction of the NLEX Connector project.

And so the great modernisation story gradually became another chapter in the rather enormous PNR book entitled:

"This Looked Like A Good Idea At The Time."

By the time we reach 2026, the Rotem story has become rather more depressing. The Metro Manila portion of the traditional PNR network has been closed and isolated by the enormous North–South Commuter Railway project, leaving much of the older rollingstock scattered around what are effectively railway islands.

The once-new Rotems are now themselves old enough to be regarded as historical equipment.

Which is rather amusing when you consider that when I photographed them in 2011, they represented the future.

The future, as it turned out, lasted about five minutes in railway time.

By more recent years, only a very small number of the original Rotem vehicles remained usable, and even the exact status of individual cars and sets became increasingly difficult to establish. At one stage the best that could apparently be achieved was two sets, and even today there is considerable uncertainty about whether any of the original Rotem fleet remains operational on the surviving South Line operation.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the wonderfully efficient way in which railway equipment goes from "state-of-the-art modernisation project" to "does anyone know where the other half of it went?"

Of course, it is far too early in this series to start getting nostalgic about the later INKA-built railcars.

Those arrived under the Junn Magno era, a period which, in hindsight, arguably represented one of the last times when traditional PNR appeared to have a genuinely positive future ahead of it. New trains were arriving, new projects were being discussed, and there was at least some impression that somebody had a plan beyond simply keeping yesterday's equipment running until it physically fell apart.

Sadly, even the newer INKA equipment has not escaped the traditional PNR curse.

Damage, deterioration and operational difficulties have reduced the available fleet, because apparently being new is no guarantee that something will actually be treated as though it is worth keeping.

And then we get to the rather fascinating question of maintenance.

Once the Metro Manila operation was progressively shut down for the new railway works, much of the traditional PNR fleet was effectively pushed south. The grand old railway system became increasingly fragmented, with the surviving operations centred around the South Line and Bicol, while various depots and maintenance facilities disappeared, changed purpose, or became isolated from the remaining operational railway.

Exactly how you are supposed to undertake serious heavy maintenance on a fleet when the railway has progressively removed or isolated so much of its supporting infrastructure is something I will leave to people considerably more qualified than myself.

Although I do have a suggestion.

Perhaps they could put the broken trains on the back of trucks.

It worked for getting the brand-new Rotems from the port to Tutuban.

What could possibly go wrong?

And so, with all of that wonderfully optimistic railway planning, infrastructure isolation, accidental train destruction, questionable maintenance arrangements and the occasional miracle thrown into the mix, we come to the end of our look at the PNR railcar fleet as it existed in 2011.

This period was actually a fascinating transition point.

The older generations were still hanging around — locomotives and railcars that had survived decades of neglect, changing governments, changing liveries, changing plans and the occasional encounter with something considerably less railway-shaped than themselves.

Alongside them sat the new Rotems, representing the modern PNR that everyone hoped would emerge.

And then, lurking just over the horizon, came the next generation.

As usual, Philippine railway history refused to follow anything resembling a sensible straight line.

So let's have one final look at the railcars of this particular era — the shiny new arrivals, the ageing survivors, the obscure oddities and the members of classes that really should have been scrapped years earlier but somehow continued to hang on.

Because if there is one thing Philippine railway rollingstock has consistently demonstrated, it is this:

Never underestimate a train that has absolutely no business still being alive.

And thankfully, there were plenty of those.

Which is, of course, precisely why we were there with cameras.

Because sensible railway photography would be far too easy.

Last man standing is this double ended CMC which, like so many others before it, was no longer self propelled and always needed a loco to haul her.

This was a very attractive livery when newly painted, but had deteriorated by now. It no longer even wears this.

CMC-201

Pasay Road station in 2011. This staiton, like most others in Metro Manila, has been obliterated.

Photo: Brad Peadon

----------------------------------------

Kogane 'Class 59'

And then, because apparently the Philippine National Railways hadn't already accumulated enough interesting and slightly improbable rollingstock, along came the KiHa 59 “Kogane”. This rather exotic three-car Japanese diesel multiple unit arrived in the Philippines after being donated by JR East, having previously enjoyed a considerably more glamorous existence in Japan as a Joyful Train for excursion and charter work. Originally converted from the venerable KiHa 58/28 family, the set had been rebuilt several times before becoming the Kogane, complete with its distinctive interior and decidedly more upmarket appearance. After being withdrawn in Japan in late 2010, it was shipped off to the Philippines, where it suddenly found itself operating in an environment somewhat removed from the genteel world of Japanese excursion trains. Initially intended for special and premium services, the Kogane eventually ventured into regular PNR operations, including services south from Manila towards Naga. Of course, placing a Japanese excursion train onto PNR metals came with its own unique set of challenges, and before long the poor Kogane discovered one of the less desirable local traditions — people throwing rocks at trains. Protective grilles consequently appeared over the windows, transforming this once rather elegant Japanese tourist train into something resembling a railway carriage that had been sent to prison and wasn't entirely trusted to behave itself.

Still, for those of us interested in unusual railway machinery, seeing the Kogane wandering around the Philippines was another excellent example of PNR's wonderfully unpredictable approach to rollingstock — where you could never be entirely sure whether the next train would be an ancient American locomotive, a Japanese DMU, an Italian import, an Indonesian refugee, or something else that had somehow escaped from a railway museum halfway around the planet.