“Lion Cub” - Russian tram goes for export

The name of this tram comes from its older “brother” - the three-section Lev model, which can accommodate 382 passengers. Here the possibilities are much more modest. There are 34 seats, in total the car is designed for a maximum of 155 people (in later models 40 and 161 passengers, respectively).


By the end of 2023, the tram was in use in many Russian cities. These are Tula, Yekaterinburg, Izhevsk, Kursk, Moscow, Krasnoyarsk, Ulan-Ude and others. We also know about the delivery of a batch of trams to Latvia - “war is war, but lunch is according to schedule”!

History of creation

It was quite long and intricate. The model, featuring fundamentally new bogies and a carriage, has been developed since the early 2000s by the Ust-Katavsky plant. Serial production is scheduled for 2002. However, UKVZ changed plans and abandoned the project, postponing it until 2013. This year, the plant's Trading House held a ceremonial presentation of tram bogies, the production of which was expected to begin in the near future. But in 2014, UKVZ quarreled with this organization and broke off relations with it. The rights to produce the new cart remained with the Trading House. Later, one of his co-founders founded his own company and bought the documentation. The release of the new model (it received the index 71-911) was organized by the Transport Systems PC company on the basis of the Tver plant, which was engaged in the production of cars.


A pair of low-floor prototypes were created: a one- and three-section version. The first had four axles, the second - six. The total investment in the development of a new type of tram is 10 million euros. The first models consisted of 80% Russian components. But the main ones were still produced abroad. This is a Czech power unit, a gearbox from Austria, doors from Finland.

Test

They started in the capital back in 2014. After testing was completed, the car received a certificate allowing mass production. The “Lion Cub” was supposed to be put on its balance sheet by the Mosgortrans organization, but for some reason this did not happen and the model returned to Tver. It was tested there in 2015, and in Perm in 2017. The first more or less large series of 63 cars rolled off the assembly line only in 2020.

About construction

In terms of design, the car looks attractive, even somewhat futuristic. It’s worth saying: the tram is produced in Tver, but the front and rear sections, made of fiberglass, are supplied by the Nizhny Novgorod enterprise Composites Factory.


Among the design features, low-floor rotary trolleys (some of the technical solutions used in them are patented) and batteries stand out. Thanks to the latter, the tram is able to travel at least 1,5 km without a contact network. And the designers are not going to stop there: in the future they plan to provide a greater range (it is planned to use the ideas incorporated in the Pioneer electric bus).

The passenger compartment

You can enter it through one of four doors. The two central ones have 4 doors, the outer ones have 2 doors. The floor is covered with a special non-slip coating similar to laminate. The seats are located on podiums, which can be reached by steps.


There are USB ports for recharging gadgets, there are information boards, and buttons for communicating with the driver. “Lion Cub” is equipped with dual-zone climate control, allowing you to set different temperatures in the driver’s cabin and passenger compartment. The seats vary in size: large ones are comfortable for sitting with children, small ones are suitable for single passengers.

Cabin

There is a separate sliding door leading into it, and the partition is mirrored. In the driver’s chair it’s like in an aquarium: panoramic visibility, even the pillars are somehow not noticeable. Control is carried out using a lever that performs the functions of a controller. Information about the operation of the tram systems and the situation in the cabin can be read from three displays.


The tram basically has a modular design. This makes it possible to assemble a whole line of cars of different lengths and passenger capacity. From 2014 to the end of 2023, 235 cars were produced. The cost depends on the configuration and ranges from 50-80 million rubles.