Draft:UIC-Z1 railway coaches

The UIC-Z1 railway coaches are a series of passenger cars for passenger transport built for the Italian State Railways (FS). Some units were also made in the control car version.

History
The Z1s were produced in three separate orders from 1985 to 1993 with slight differences between one series and another.

These are long-distance vehicles for trains, intended for international and national traffic, specific for fast trains and designed to take over from the UIC-X coaches.

In the construction of the Z1s, particular attention was paid to safety issues, with innovative measures in terms of materials and structure: in fact, they are equipped with fire-rated partition walls and most of the materials are approved in the safety class fire/smoke 0 or 1.

The structure is of the tubular type, with a sectional and steel sheet casing. The adoption of a raised floor laid on anti-vibration structures makes them extremely silent for the occupants.

The Z1 family of carriages is largely based on the experience gained with the construction of the Eurofima coaches. The Z1 coaches are particularly suitable for InterCity train service thanks to the bogies approved for $200 kmh$: the interiors are large and spacious, divided in 6-seater compartments and equipped with a large corridor equipped with folding seats. The first class carriages have 9 compartments for a total of 54 seats, against 66 in the second class.

Some exemplars of this family of coaches were adapted after their entry into service to be used in the composition of the Treno Misura Archimede.

There are also specialized models, with luggage compartment function, equipped with disabled or control car compartment. The latter, unlike the towed coaches, are not divided into compartments but have a saloon configuration for a total of 64 seats. The first control car unit, transformed at the Costamasnaga railway workshops, was delivered to the FS in June of 1998, on the basis of an expected order of 35 units.

Due to significant problems encountered in reliability, in 2017 the supply of a new type of a Z1 control car (Z1a) began to be used on reversible InterCity trains, already in the new InterCity livery, sanctioning the de facto progressive setting aside of the units obtained with the previous series.

Conversion
The carriages destined for redevelopment as part of the IC901 project, starting from 2002-2003, have had their interiors redone in order to standardize them with the other Italian InterCity vehicles. The conversion was carried out at the facilities of the companies AnsaldoBreda and Corifer. Several units were also assigned as part of the project for the completion of the Eurostar City (ES*city) services, a commercial name later abandoned by Trenitalia in favor of the introduction of a new category of trains Frecciabianca in 2011. The project, originally extended to a number of carriages exceeding the estimated 901 (including Eurofima coaches, Gran Confort and Z1s) was then reduced in 2009 to about 450 coaches, given the poor transformation by the facilities and the repeated breakdowns that occurred to the transformed carriages.

Use for InterCity Notte
Since when the "Giubileo" UIC-X coaches have been removed from service and scrapped, the UIC-Z1 coaches have been assigned to the InterCity Notte service in order to replace the UIC-Xs, and by virtue of this accomplishment, the Z1s have received the new InterCity Notte livery. Same thing it happened for the Gran Confort railway coaches.