Railcar FER-560 (591-560)

Two-carrrige thermal railcar.

The first railcar of this kind arrived in Spain in 1956 from Germany and had three cars: two trailers and a motor car with two driving cabins that working as a locomotive, which meant that in order to reverse its direction, a manoeuvre was required to put the motor car at the head of the train. It was numbered 301.

It was not until 1962 that the first series of railbuses (from 302 to 361) was received, also equipped with three cars, one of which was a motor car and two were trailers, one of them with a driver's cabin. This was one of the differences with the prototype, another difference being that it had bellows for intercommunication between the cars. The great difference in age between this first series of railbuses and the prototype led the railway workers to nickname the 301 "Grandfather". The last railbus of the 300 series was received at the end of 1964.

Later, from 1967, a second series was built (the 400/500) with different compositions: some had four cars, two engines and two trailers, and others, as is the case of the one we have preserved, only had one engine and one trailer.

Our railcar is the FER-560 - FRC-560, which is one of the last examples built in 1970, which later received the registration UIC 591-560, and was built by a consortium of Spanish companies.