DMU is a great excursion vehicle, btw. It will run on any kind of track. They can get into harbors, industrial sidings and recently closed sections where mainline loading gauge equipment has no business to be in.

What's more, the railway operators weren't so skittish about their monopolies (they had a legal monopolies back then), so many were just given to preservationist associations. Now everything goes to scrap with strict no reselling contracts.

>>132039 -- Wasn't that when the operators still owned the vehicles they used?

>>132040
They still own their stock too. But consider today, freight is completely competitive, suburban passenger traffic is open and intercity is open to independent operators on routes where there is no monopoly traffic (should be completely open by 2019, I think), so any old stock - into the bin it goes.

>>132042
In the UK at least, the passenger operators and most of the freight operators don't really own their stock. Most is leased from stock holding companies, who also finance the purchase of new stock. This means that when a unit reaches EOL it's handed back to the ROSCO who have no interest in giving away for free to preservation that which they could sell for scrap or sell/lease on around the world. I believe we've got stock that's ended up in at least Canada, the Netherlands and Poland.

Reckon the ROSCOs' MO is "flog 'em to death, then flog 'em to the knacker's".

>>132043
This is the Finnish case, I'd say this applies to much of Nordic and German countries.

There are whopping 12 working motor cars and 6 trailers and several more in static display, owned by 5 different associations.

The canonical configuration is 2 motor cars and one optional trailer in between, so the number isn't that big in reality.