Trenchway

A Series 1022 train approaches North Canal Station in Guri

The trenchway is a type of rail-based urban transportation system characterised by having elements of both mass transportation and commuter-regional rail. Trenchway systems tend to have lines much longer than subway systems, branching as they go into the outer areas of cities, while also connecting key destinations within city centres. Because of this characteristic, trenchway systems tend to complement subway systems by serving as express underground lines that cross the densest areas of cities with few stops. In the traditional sense, the systems incorporate trains of various lenghts and sizes, depending on demand, with the main characteristic being very short headways between them.

It is common in Riamo, where it has come to replace many rail-based urban commuter lines, incorporating elements of subways and heavy rail into one unified type of train .

Name Origin

The name originates from the main visual characteristic of the first lines: the use of an excavated open trench which places the rails at a height lower than ground level .

Conception

The first Trenchway originated in the city of Volton in the early 1910s, when a former freight corridor was put to use as a local railway line that bypassed the main stations of the city. The line eventually came to be known as the 'Trenchway line' due to its characteristical trench-dug profile, giving birth to a new concept of local bypassing rail transport.

Due to its success, three more lines would open in the following years, all using 'The Trench' corridor, which prompted the official naming to become Trenchway by 1923.

Given their success, trenchways would go to be introduced in some other major cities soon after, with its first application outside Volton being Guri, by 1922. As the city started to grow well past the limits of what had conventionally been considered the city proper, local officials saw a rise on the need of express routes across the city that avoided the slow and station-dense tramway routes.

By late 1925, plans were laid out to convert some of Guri's regional train lines into suburb-to-downtown lines between the peripherial areas and the central areas of most cities than encompassed the Guri metropolitan area. These lines, which would eventually become the first trenchway system in Anteria, would eventually be expanded to have several terminals in the outskirts of the metropolis. This plan gave the Trenchways their most important characteristic: underground central corridors with mere seconds of headways, which serve as cross-city undeground bypass express routes, which surface at some point on their way to the outskirts and diverge into several terminals each, allowing for a mixed use of the lines which ranges from suburban rail services - for those coming from the suburbs - to intra-city quick bypasses - for local trips.

Characteristics

Trenchway train passing through northern Guri.

• Notably large platforms and stations
• Long trains, often featuring double decker cars
• Around 5 minute headways for stations located in the city center
• Usually have universal fare system by personal non-transferable magnetic card that autocalculates journey fees based on distance between initial and final stations.
• Deep underground stations near city centers, and near-surface trench-like railways in outskirts with one or two access points.

Read more

• Upen tunneling construction method
• Talgo (train operator)
• Riamese National Trenchway Network