Alpha Trains and Siemens Mobility signed a contract for the supply of 7 Desiro Mainline regional trains which will enter services on the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern railway network, in north Germany, along the Baltic Sea coast.
The trains will be leased by Ostdeutsche Eisenbahn GmbH (ODEG) and will operated the Baltic coast east rail network, from December 2019 onwards by the ODEG on behalf of Verkehrsgesellschaft Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (VMV).
The trains will initially be delivered in a three-car configuration and will be used on the Rostock-Sassnitz, Stralsund-Binz and Rostock-Züssow rail routes. After the delivery, a fourth car will be added to increase the train’s capacity. “The Desiro ML impressed us with its dynamic driving capabilities, excellent driving comfort and with the powerful impellent thanks to its four bogies,” says Arnulf Schuchmann, Managing Director of ODEG.
Expansion of the train’s capacity is facilitated by the flexible single-car concept of the Desiro platform, which allows simply adding an extra intermediate car to the trainset. By optimally utilizing the train’s entire length for seats, operators benefit from a higher transport capacity. Over 90 percent of the Desiro ML’s length is available for passengers.
The production has already started at the Siemens Mobility train manufacturing facility in Krefeld. “Alpha Trains ordered the Desiro ML as its first customer many years ago and we are pleased that this proven and reliable platform is also used for this project,” said Thomas Schmidt, Managing Director of Alpha Trains Europa GmbH.
ODEG provides regional passenger services on behalf of the federal states of Berlin, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. It is the largest privately operated railway system in eastern Germany, with a total of 11 lines and 1,200 kilometers of routes.
The operator transports around 18.2 million passengers a year, covering a total distance of roughly 11 million kilometers.
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