The Hellenic Railways "HST200". Which livery to choose?
In early 1980's Hellenic Railways needed a new high speed passenger train. One choice was to rebuilt and upgrade the famous "Aeolus" and the other choice was a completely new, modern diesel powered train. Funding for the program was split between HR own funds and state money, like the Locomotive Manufacturing program. After searching, the British HST125 was chosen as a design base. Total 36 built, in two batches of 18 each, named "9AK 52## or simply 520 Class DMU/HS (High Speed) and 10AK 55##/550 Class DMU/HS. The "AK" in Hellenics is "ΑυτοΚινητάμαξα", translates to something like "Self Propelled Carriage" and first appeared in mid 1930's. Units numbering are 5201 to 5218 and 5501 to 5518. Also both are referred as "HST200".
The 520/550 Classes have some differences from their British cousins, such as twin windscreen wipers and extra lights built in under glass above the windscreen (taken from HR MLW/ETA locomotives). Driver cabin was based on first generation HST with metric instruments of same design with the Aeolus (both round and tape like instruments and a large speedometer at right corner), plus control levers mounted together not separately.
Carriage arrangement is usually MU (motor unit)-FCC (First Class Car)-RC (Restaurant Car) or Bar/SCC (Standard Class Car)-SCC-SCC-SCC-MU, while second batch added one more FCC or SCC.
A variant of the Mk3 Cars built in late 1990's to early 2000's for the Siemens/ETA H561 series, because these cars were capable of 200kph. All previous HR cars were capable of 120-160kph, not enough for the Siemens.
In late 1990's the 520/550 were the first trains which received the new Signalling/Information System designed and built by ELS Works and a LCD screen was added to instrument panel. The rebuilt program finished recently for all units and among changes was new instruments/SIS screen with HDU for speed limits/alarms and VP185 engines. Also HR copied a feature of German ICE trains and added a large screen inside the FCCs for monitoring newspaper headlines, advertisements etc together with the train speed. All trains provide also free Wi-Fi network in cars for passengers, but there is a Wi-Fi jammer in driver cabin to prevent accidents like that recently occurred in Spain.