User:Hachijo8/BSIT

These are all test templates, for use by a friend of mine.

History
The Philippines hosts one of the oldest rail networks in Asia, having seen its first line planned and constructed in the late 19th century.

Early history in Luzon


On June 25, 1875, King Alfonso XII of Spain promulgated a Royal Decree directing the Office of the Inspector of Public Works to submit a plan for a railroad network in Luzon. On August 6, the royal decree was made into law by the Cortes Generales of Spain allowing for planning and its eventual construction. In the Philippines, a team of railway engineers led by Eduardo López Navarro were commissioned to draft a study establishing the. This later became the Memoria Sobre el Plan General de Ferrocarriles en la Isla de Luzón or the General Plan of Railroads in the Island of Luzon, which was submitted to the Spanish government by Minister of Overseas Adelardo López de Ayala on February 5, 1876. Civil engineer Antonio de la Càmara then drafted plans for the initial section between Manila and Dagupan in 1882.

Meanwhile, a parallel proposal to establish of a tram network in Manila was presented by León Moussour in 1878. It called for the establishment of five lines heading towards Malate, Malacañang, Sampaloc, Tondo and the Port of Manila. This was later approved on April 22, 1881 which was awarded a 60 year concession. The Compañía de Tranvías de Filipinas was then established the following year and the first segment between Binondo and Tondo was opened on December 9, 1883 and the remaining five lines were opened for the remaining years of the 1880s. This was initially a horsecar system which greatly affected efficiency of its services.

On January 26, 1885, auctions were held in both Madrid and Manila for the construction and operation of the Ferrocarril de Manila a Dagupan line. The sole bidder, the Manila Railway Company led by British entrepreneur Edmund "Don Edmundo" H. Sykes, was awarded on June 1, 1887. Ownership was later transferred to Carlos E. Bertadano a week later and construction began on July 31. The rolling stock used was then purchased from various British manufacturers. The first section was opened in 1891 between Manila and Bagbag. The full length of the line was opened on November 24, 1892 and incorporating the Manila Railway Company as a private limited company. Meanwhile, a Decauville network was under construction by the Spanish during its then-ongoing occupation of Mindanao but this line was never completed.

The rail line became vital during the Philippine Revolution and the Philippine–American War as both the First Philippine Republic and the invading American forces battled for the control of the network until 1900 when the American forces acquired both the rail network and the Tranvías.

Insular Government acquisitions
After the Philippine–American War, the Compañia de los Tranvias de Filipinas network became the Kansas and Utah Short Line directly owned by the American colonial government. In 1903, the Short Line was privatized and ownership was transferred to the Manila Electric Railroad and Light Company (Meralco) owned by Charles M. Swift. Electrification of the new Meralco network started soon after, with J. G. Brill Company building the streetcar vehicles to be used in the network. The last tram engines from the old Tranvías were decommissioned later in 1907 and was transferred to a sugarcane railway in Negros.

Expansion
The first expansion of the railroads outside of Luzon was the establishment of a rail network in the Visayas region. An informal syndicate was formed by several notable American businessmen and financing institutions. On March 5, 1906, the Philippine Railway Company, Inc. was incorporated in Connecticut. Construction began in 1907 for a line between Iloilo City and Roxas, Capiz and the system opened not long after. The Far Eastern Review published a set of plans by the American government in 1906 that would establish a rail network in the island of Mindanao. Although a network of lines belonging to various sugar plantations and sawmills opened throughout the island, the state's network never went beyond track bed construction and while proposals have been mentioned until the present day, construction never truly commenced.

Back in Luzon, the Manila Railway's operations in the Philippines was acquired by the Manila Railroad Company in 1906, a company incorporated in New Jersey and was based in 45 Nassau Street in New York City. Higgins then established a separate holding company for its interests in London named the Manila Railway Company (1906), Limited. Several lines for the new Manila Railroad were also being constructed throughout Luzon which would eventually consolidate into the PNR South Main Line. The first section already saw construction in the years prior although this was initially opened in 1908 as part of the Antipolo line. Expansions of the North Main Line also continued and by 1911, the first Baguio Special express train service was inaugurated. It shuttled luxury travelers from the Manila Hotel to Damortis station in Agoo, La Union, in which limousines would chauffeur tourists to the Pines Hotel in Baguio, which at the time was a small hill station.

Railroads further extended in the Visayas region when in 1911 when the Philippine Railway Co. opened the Cebu line from Argao to Danao, Cebu. It was built by the Philippine Railways Construction Company which was also owned by the same syndicate that owned the Philippine Railway Co.

Modernization in the 1920s
The Manila Railroad was nationalized by Act No. 2574 on February 4, 1916 with Francis Burton Harrison acquiring both the Manila Railway Company (1906), Limited and the Manila Railroad Company of New Jersey. That same year, the line was extended to Lucena, Quezon and the first Bicol Express service was announced. As a result, the aging British-built rolling stock from Higgins' tenure as overall chief executive was retired from mainline service. The Metropolitan Carriage and Wagon Company also closed its operations in the Philippines in 1923 and the American Car and Foundry Company filling their role.

A five-year reconstruction program of the Meralco network was also initiated in 1920 and ended in 1924.

Peak during the 1930s
The 1930s enjoyed the peak mileage of the Philippine railroad network. Various track gauges were also used, from the 2-foot gauge used in the Central Azucarrera de Don Pedro of Batangas to the standard-gauge Dahican Lumber Company of, with 3 ft and 3 ft 6 in being the most popular, the former being the predominant track gauge used in Negros plantation lines and the latter being the predominant track gauge of the Panay Railways and the Manila Railroad.

In 1936, the first standard-gauge railway was introduced to the Philippines in the form of two Climax locomotives for the Dahican Lumber Company (DALCO). These were originally built in 1917 for the San Joaquin and Eastern Railroad in California and were sold after their closure in 1933. In July 1941, a 3T type Shay locomotive was also acquired from the Finkbine-Guild Lumber Company. The status of this short-line railroad after the war remains unknown.

Most of the improvements on the rail network were destroyed during Japanese invasion of the Philippines during the World War II. Of the more than a thousand route-kilometers before the war, only 452 were operational after it. For several years after the war, work was undertaken on what could be salvaged of the railroad system. By the war's end, the tram network was also damaged beyond repair amid a city that lay in ruins. It was dismantled and jeepneys became the city's primary form of transportation, plying the routes once served by the tram lines. With the return of buses and cars to the streets, traffic congestion became a problem.

Rolling stock
The North–South Commuter Railway will have two types of rolling stock: commuter trains and airport express trains. With the exception of wheelchair spaces, the commuter trains will have a capacity of 2,242 passengers. The express trains, on the other hand, will have a capacity of 392 passengers. A total of 464 electric multiple unit traincars have been procured to operate on the line, with 104 of these being the 8-car EM10000 class trainsets to be built by the Japan Transport Engineering Company (J-TREC), successor to the Tokyu Car Corporation that provided rolling stock to the Philippines from 1955 to 1976. The trainsets were previously named as the Sustina Commuter at the time of purchase, and are based on JR East commuter stock such as the E233 series but adapted to standard gauge. The trains are also designed to be interoperable with the Metro Manila Subway. The trainsets have been designated as the EM10000 class in October 2021. The first batch of the commuter trains arrived on November 21, 2021. The bidding for an order for 304 more commuter cars in a separate contract was opened in September 2020, with the joint venture of Japan Transport Engineering Company and Sumitomo Corporation winning the contract on January 14, 2022. The first EM10000 class train was unveiled on March 18, 2022 and the contract for the 304 cars was signed by the DOTr, Sumitomo, and J-TREC on the same day. The deliveries of the 304 cars are set to be completed by September 2028.

The 56 airport express trainsets, meanwhile, are being procured as of 2019. On February 26, 2021, a suggested preliminary design based on the E259 and E353 series was published. On May 10, the Department of Transportation later announced it will acquire the airport express trainsets from Japanese manufacturers. After several months of delays and rescheduling, three bidders have submitted their designs: Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Sojitz joint venture, Marubeni and Stadler Rail, and Mitsubishi and Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF). On June 28, 2023, a Japanese corporate news outlet reported that the contract package NS-03 for the airport express trainsets is expected for award to Mitsubishi–CAF by October. Although former Undersecretary for Railways Cesar Chavez has hinted at a Congress hearing that CAF will indeed be awarded the contract for the airport trains and the contract being originally awarded in the last quarter of 2022,, the Philippine government has yet to provide an official announcement on the matter as of July 2023.

Big Big stage
A mock-up model of the commuter train was revealed to the public on June 28, 2021, and was delivered to the Philippines from Japan in August 2021.

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