XR 7487 railcar trailer REE

The bogies have insulated half-axles and conductive bearings. The current is transmitted by tongues resting on blades in the chassis, as on the B⁵D SE, but apparently more flexible. Photo. There is a dynamo under one of the bogies. Wheel set characteristics: see table opposite.

Removing the body is easy, but not as easy as advertised in the manual: it’s better with the help of plastic cards in the area of the four small, easy-to-spot lugs. The body spreads a little from the chassis. The interior fittings are nice. The only thing missing is a touch of silver on the seat handles in 2nd class, and (but I’m not sure) white headrests in 1st class. Photo.

The lighting PCB sits in a “false ceiling” through which seven LEDs shine. This part is completely warped at the ends, which flare out into a tee shape, presumably for the lighting of the small lamps in the era III versions. Given the deformation, I’m afraid the lights won’t face the holes! Photos, end 1, end 2. What’s more, the PCB tends to come out of the support because the centring pins are too small, or they should have been hot crushed, or the PCB should have been screwed to its support, which is screwed to the fittings. Here again, REE-la-différence has struck! It would have been better to have a false ceiling of constant or almost constant width along its entire length, and therefore more rigid.

One last thing: I can’t see where the control board (ref. XB-PCB-XR-02) promised by REE will be connected: there are no connectors, apart from the two linking the strip to the chassis.

For these reasons, I’m thinking of replacing the original lighting with my own strip, already used in the Roco, controlled by an ESU Lokpilot 5 FX decoder. On the face of it, it’ll be fairly easy. Photo for the Roco. I’m also going to look into the possibility of a functional coupling passing under the full skirt, as I did for the Roco trailers and for the Picasso Mistral.

See the Loco-Revue Forum.

These trailers are often misleadingly referred to as “Decauville” trailers, as the real Decauville XR 6000 and 7200 trailers were built just before and just after the 2nd World War, and served as a kind of prototype.

The 7487 is part of the 7353 to 7581 series with a small luggage compartment (6.7 m²), manufactured from 1952 to 1960. This series was mixed 1st class (12 seats) and 2nd class (65 seats) (XRABD).

Quote from Loco-Revue No. 67 c 15.

This type of railcar trailer represents the most widespread model on the SNCF network. Of lighter construction than the classic passenger coaches, it is intended exclusively for railcar traffic.

All these trailers are similar with some exceptions. They are subdivided into several sub-series according to their interior fittings, their general characteristics being identical.

They are intended to be towed by medium power railcars (from 300 hp (220 kW) up to 825 hp (605 kW) in order to increase the capacity offered by these railcars on certain lines, using the available power.

The possible compositions vary with the power of the traction unit(s) and the profile of the line to be covered — a maximum of 4 trailers can be reached in some cases with one or two railcars.