The DAF Super Citytrain seems to the story of a mythological creature, an assembly with metal sheets, equipped with motor and tires and designed to move on the asphalt with hundreds of accommodated people inside. Little has been published about its history and even less about what its destiny has been, achieving an image of yours is almost an impossible mission and its origins date back a few decades ago, but nevertheless there it follows, in the pages of the Guinness Records, holding the longest bus title ever manufactured.
Although there are those who point out that the world’s largest service record is already held by other models, more recent, their data continues to impress.
Don’t say bus … No, I said Daf Super Citytrain, the biggest bus ever built, at least according to the Guinness World Records registration, than both in its web edition and in the printed printed in 2015 it presents it as the longest coach in the world. Bazas has to be. According to the British publication, these huge articulated buses of the Democratic Republic of the Congo reach 32.2 meters long with an empty weight of 28 tons and can comfortably transport inside about 350 passengers.
Its size is so stunning that in 2015 they still presented themselves as the longest buses ever built, with a length and capacity that exceeded the Extra Grand German Auttram or the Youngman JNP6250G Chinese. And that the DAF Super Citytrain is not exactly a novelty of the automotive industry: Guinness dates its record in 1989, more than 30 years ago.
What is your story? It is not easy to spin it. Very little has been written about the DAF Super Citytrain. One of the most complete chips on the articulated vehicle and its chronicle was de facto a company in the sector that is far from the Congo: the Transport Firm Slovaca Zvolen. On its website a short article published in September 1989 by the magazine Commercial Motor In which it is explained that the manufacturer Daf International had just closed the sale of the “largest bus in the world” to a Kinshasa coach company, the largest capital and city in the Congo, then known as the Republic of Zaire.
Although brief, the article is interesting because it gives us an idea of what the DAF CityTrain was like: “It consists of a standard DAF power unit coupled to a local manufacturing stepped structure trailer with a special bus body.” The chronicle points out that the capacity of the vehicle was 450 travelers – higher than that indicated by Guinness – and among other curiosities indicates that a company in the country was responsible for blocking the two upper marches of the model to limit its speed to less than 42 kilometers per hour.
Is there more data? Yes. And quite interesting. The review of Commercial Motor It reveals that the bus measured 18 meters long and slides an important idea: given its success, in 1989 the company proposed to deliver 55 extra units and already worked in “an ‘Super’ version”, a vehicle equipped with a second trailer that would offer capacity for more than 500 travelers. That coletilla, that of “Super”, is the one mentioned by the Guinness World Records in its texts, although the English publication reduces its places. As required, you can transport “comfortably to 350 passengers.”
We also know that by the same dates, in the fall of 1989, a semi -trailer bus began to circulate that took the name City Train of its operator. When a trailer was added, the last name “Super” was added, which indicated that his capacity had been expanded: on board 170 people sitting –110 in the first section and 60 in the trailer – and 180 standing, most also in the first section of the vehicle could travel. That on paper, of course. Given the population of Kinshasa, there are those who assure that the Super Citytrain traveled more loaded.
An obsession that remains alive. The use of extragraduate articulated motor skills – or rather of bus trailers, for the photos that we keep from the CityTrain, without the extra section of the “Super” -, is greatly explained by the need for displacement in the Kinshasa metropolitan area, where according to Macrotrends data around 16.3 million people reside today.
The obsession with the XXL coaches is not however exclusive to the Congo of the late 80s: years before Wyane Corporation had produced in Indiana a huge model of 23 my during the last decades different companies have announced huge models. The sector has launched amazing designs, such as the great art 300, Yongman JNP650G or Autotram Extra Grand, which was presented in Germany with a length of 30.7 meters and for some it can presume to be today the largest bus in service in the world. Its dimensions do not reach however, which the emblematic DAF Super Citytrain reached.
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