Lorenzo Simonelli, was keen to stress GE’s long-term commitment to rail transport during an exclusive interview with IRJ at InnoTrans, and the fact that GE has continued to invest during the global financial crisis and economic downturn. “We have a game plan which we put in place for the long term,” he says. “We launched our investment programme in the worst year of the downturn, and invested $US 1bn during the three years from 2010 to 2012.” Investment has been
directed at GE’s core areas both to expand capacity and
PH337ACai diesel-electric locomotive, which was built by Turkish partner Tülomsas attracted considerable interest in the outside area. The locomotive has a wider body profile than the PowerHaul locomotive supplied to British freight operator Freightliner which was displayed at InnoTrans in 2010 and is equipped with a V-16, twin-turbo 2.76MW engine and an ac traction system. It is designed to offer high tractive effort to support lighter axleload applications and GE says the locomotive reduces fuel usage and greenhouse gas
G
E Transportation’s PowerHaul series
Simonelli stresses GE’s commitment to investment T
HE president and CEO of GE Transportation, Mr
develop new technologies. GE has developed its PowerHaul range of locomotives for Europe with its Turkish partner Tülomsas, which follow the latest TSI standards for interoperability. “This is the most fuel-efficient locomotive out there,” says Simonelli.
“Innovation drives
innovation, but it needs to be economic,” Simonelli says. ”The transition from Tier 3 to Tier 4 requires a lot of investment, but we need to have time for the industry to see the benefits of where we have got to.” GE’s new Tempo signalling portfolio supports both ETCS levels 1 and 2 and CBTC on a
GE unveils European PowerHaul locomotive
emissions by 9% compared with existing operating fleet averages. The European PowerHaul locomotive is also the first commercial deployment of GE’s new Tempo ETCS solution which will be rolled out in 2013.
Germany’s Heavy Haul Power International (HHPI) is the inaugural customer for the platform, and will work with GE to secure approval for operation in Germany and the Benelux countries. Turkish State Railways (TCDD) has also tested a British profile locomotive that was built by Tülomsas with a view to placing future orders.
N an effort to boost the struggling locomotive manufacturing sector, Professor Roland Pörner, managing director of the German Railway Industry Association (VDB), announced plans to replace Germany´s oldest privately- owned diesel locomotives. Speaking at the opening
VDB promotes plan to boost German locomotive production I
and dirtiest diesel units. He says that there are
press conference of InnoTrans, Pörner said that manufacturers, railway operators and the environment could all benefit from an investment plan to replace the network´s oldest
IRJ November 2012
approximately 3200 diesel locomotives in Germany today, 600 of which are over 30 years old and still have their original engines. Many do not even meet EU Level 1 emission standards. Most of these locomotives are owned by private operators because German Rail (DB) has replaced almost all of its older engines. But with these operators currently struggling to secure finance for new rolling stock investments, VDB proposes
that the federal government awards an environmental bonus of 20% of the cost price of a new locomotive to spur new procurement.
“It is very important that we get this 20% because a 10% incentive would not be enough to get the impulse required to invest,” Pörner told IRJ. Pörner says funds for this
programme would come from Germany’s Valued Added Tax (VAT) which is currently 19%, with around ƒ80m required annually to fund the programme if all 600 locomotives are
common failsafe scalable hardware and software platform and PowerHaul is the first GE locomotive to be equipped with Tempo ETCS onboard systems. GE signed a contract with MTR in Hong Kong in June to collaborate on the introduction of Tempo CBTC and interlockings to enable MTR to assess how Tempo could help to improve the performance of the metro. The collaboration will continue until May 2014. At the beginning of this year GE acquired RMI, a railway software specialist. Three products were demonstrated at InnoTrans: RailConnect, a railway operations
management system, RailDocs
which enables maintenance departments to plan, manage and optimise their daily operations, and Oasis, an intermodal terminal operating system.
Simonelli is quite positive about the future. “We are in an industry with a positive long-term future,” he says. Nevertheless, a lot of projects in Europe are on hold. “Western Europe is obviously slow, but a lot of emerging markets including China are robust,” he says. “Australia, South America and North America are good but are not accelerating as fast as we expected. You have to brace yourself for volatility,” he observed.
replaced. And while Pörner says that VDB has been in discussions with the current German federal transport ministry and ministry of economics, the proposal is designed with the next German government in mind. “We have been working on
this proposal for 12 months and we are hopeful of getting some movement by spring 2014,” he explains. “Germany has elections in autumn 2013 and this is one of the proposals we would like to make to the new government.”
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