News
TCDD orders first 300km/h trains
T
URKISH State Railways (TCDD) has awarded a contract to Siemens for seven 300km/h trains for operation on its growing high-speed network.
The contract is worth
£1.6bn Thameslink train deal finalised B
RITAIN’s Department for Transport (DfT) has finalised the £1.6bn contract with a consortium of Siemens and Cross London Trains for 1140 emu cars for the cross- London Thameslink network. The complex PPP deal has taken two years to conclude. The consortium includes
three financial partners: Siemens Project Ventures, Innisfree, and 3i Infrastructure. Siemens confirmed that it
has already invested ƒ50m in developing the design for the Desiro City train which will enable the first trains to enter service from early 2016, with a full service of 24 trains per hour being introduced by the end of 2018.
The 160km/h trains will be supplied as either 162m-long
eight-car sets or 242m-long 12-car trains.
The vehicles will be 2.8m wide and will have aluminium bodyshells and so-called “fly- by-wire” technology to keep weight to a minimum. An eight-car train will weigh 278 tonnes and the 12-car version 410 tonnes.
The dual-voltage trains will include four motorised cars in an eight-car set and eight in a 12-car train. The power output at the wheel will be 3.3MW and 5MW respectively. The air-conditioned Desiro City will have wide inter-car gangways and is designed to meet the European persons of reduced mobility TSI. HSH Nordbank, Germany, is lead arranger to finance the £1.6bn deal which has a 22.5-
Korea drops plans to privatise KTX line
Transport has abandoned proposals announced last month to allow a private company to operate high- speed services from the new Suseo station is southeastern Seoul which will open in 2015. Nevertheless, the ministry still intends to proceed with its plan to turn Korail into a holding company with a number of subsidiaries including one for the Suseo services. Suseo is at the head of a new 61km high-speed line running south via Dontang to link up with the existing Gyeongbu line to Busan.
K 4
OREA’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and
Korail will have a 30% stake in the Suseo high-speed subsidiary with the remaining 70% being sold to other state-owned investors such as the National Pension Service. The idea is for the new subsidiary to compete with Korail’s existing KTX high-speed services operating from Seoul’s main station. The reoragnisation of Korail into smaller units is being implemented in an effort to stem its mounting losses. Korail has been losing between Won 400bn ($US 354m) and Won 500bn a year and overall debt stood at Won 11.6 trillion at the end of 2012.
year maturity and has committed about 7.5% of the commercial term loan financing. The PPP contract is based on train availability rather than simply supplying a fleet of trains, so Siemens will be responsible for maintaining the fleet to ensure that sufficient trains are available each day, with penalties for failure to do so. Soon after reaching financial close, Siemens announced that it has withdrawn from bidding for the tender to supply a fleet of 60 10-car emus for London’s Crossrail project, leaving Bombardier, CAF and Hitachi in the running for the £1bn contract, which should be awarded next year.
Nanjing - Ningbo HS line opens
C
HINA celebrated the completion of the latest addition to its high-speed network on July 1 with the inauguration of the Nanjing - Hangzhou - Ningbo line. Construction of the line was divided into two sections: the 256km Nanjing - Hangzhou line, which has 11 stations and sees 51 trains per day in each direction, and the 155km Hangzhou - Ningbo line, which is used by 74 trains per day and has seven stations. The lines are designed for 350km/h operation, although the maximum speed is 300km/h. Construction began on both lines in April 2009.
ƒ285m including maintenance, and delivery is due to start in 2016. The 200m-long eight-car trains will accommodate more than 500 passengers, and are based on the Velaro-D trains which Siemens is currently building for German Rail (DB). These are the first 300km/h trains to be ordered by TCDD, which currently operates a fleet of 250km/h emus supplied by CAF on its first two high-speed lines linking Ankara with Eskisehir and Konya.
An extension to the Eskisehir line to Istanbul is due to open next year and TCDD is keen to achieve a 3-hour journey time for the 533km trip.
Signalbox of the future launched
G
ERMAN Rail (DB) and Siemens launched a pilot
project on July 12 for what is described as the “signalbox of the future” using open- interface signalling architecture. The ceremony held at Annaberg-Buchholz on the Chemnitz - Vejprty Erzgebirge line was attended by Mr Hansjörg Hess, chief operating officer of DB Networks, and Mr Klaus Bremer, head of Siemens Germany.
Open-interface signalling
architecture should offer a simpler solution than current electronic signalboxes. The technology is intended for use on both heavily-used main lines as well as for simpler applications in rural areas. Further pilot projects are envisaged up to 2016 in order to test the concept under real conditions before the system can be deployed nationally. Annaberg-Buchholz was the location in 2005 for a pilot project with Siemens to test a new generation of electronic signalboxes.
IRJ August 2013
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