ようこそ Ex - JR East Saikyo Line 205 Series! (Part 2)

          Happy New Year 2014! Hopefully this year will be better than before. All people in the world celebrate it with happiness. Everyone has their own resolution to improve their achievement from year to year. Indonesia Tetsudou Fan have to do improvement in purpose to give information about many things especially railway. Since 1 January 2014, written articles are in English only to make it easy to read than two-languages in single article.

          Back to the title, I will tell you about progress of Seri 205 EMU which bought from JR East. Based on last article, we only know about HaE 7, 11, 15 set. For your information, 100 of 180 cars has been arrived to Indonesia since October last year. Fortunately, I can see all of them in Depok Depot and Bukit Duri Depot. It's a long time since last visit 2 years ago, but nothing changed  at all.

         First, I visited Bukit Duri. It is as small as Bogor Depot. Although so, I can find two sets of Seri 205 in original decal stabling inside. These sets will be sent to Depok Depot for remodeling.

HaE 23 stabling in Bukit Duri Depot, South Jakarta

          In afternoon, I moved to Depok Depot after my friend got the permission to go inside. This is a rare thing since very hard to get permit. You need to spare your time so much for visiting Depok Depot. As the biggest EMU depot in Jabodetabek, you can't explore it quickly. I started to explore the maintenance area to see remodeling progress of Seri 205.

HaE 13 still in progress...

          The changes doesn't look significant, only livery change and add "Commuter" logo instead of JR. To anticipate low-level platform, they also install passenger footsteps. To protect the driver, window grill will be installed on both front and rear cabin. Livery change uses sticker in order to worktime efficiency eventhough it will be dirty in short time. However, the front side uses paint. Needed time also shorter since Seri 205 has it own cowhanger. In other words, they don't need to make the new one.

          Done with the remodeling, now we moves into stabling area. This is the place where the rollingstocks are stabled, even the non-active rollingstocks. I will talk about the non-active rollingstock later while the main topic still about Seri 205.

         

HaE 24

HaE 4

From left to right : HaE 24 , HaE 7, HaE 25

          I think all of these sets are still waiting for debut, because there are some infrastructure must be adapted due to 10-cars set. Some stastion has been extended their platform such as Universitas Indonesia Station and Jakarta Kota Station. Not only that, the crew also need adaptation with these new EMUs. It's only about time to see the newcomer from Saikyo Line. The story still continued till all of sets arrive.

Photos : Private Archive