CRRC China will supply five European countries with composite double decker trains. CRRC Zhuzhou, a subsidiary of China Railway Rolling Stock Corp (CRRC), China’s largest rolling stock manufacturer, has released for export the first double-deck Electric Multiple Units (EMU) train sets from its plant in central China’s Hunan province.
The train set, which can run at a maximum speed of 200 kilometres per hour, will be exported to Austria and will be used on railway lines in five European countries, including Austria, Germany and Hungary, according to jeccomposites.com, an EU-based NGO dedicated to promoting composite materials.
Independently developed by the Chinese company, the double-deck EMUs comply with TSI standards, or the European Union Technical Specification for Interoperability, according to CRRC Zhuzhou.
Double decker trains
“Equipped with six coaches and 571 seats, the electric multiple units can carry 1,280 passengers. The train’s capacity is 35% higher than that of a double-decker train and thus eases capacity strains on crowded European railways,” says Sun Yongcai, president of CRRC. He also said:
“The train has a lightweight design and uses a large number of new composite materials, such as lightweight, high-strength, corrosion-resistant carbon fibers and glass-carbon fibers. The weight of the entire train is only about 10 percent heavier than a single-level train.”
It should not be forgotten, however, that Chinese-made rolling stock is having difficulties selling on the European market. EU competition authorities recently started investigating subsidies granted by the Chinese state to a manufacturer that wanted to sell rolling stock in Bulgaria, and a few years ago the PNL government led by Florin Cîțu banned the sale of Made in China rolling stock on the Romanian market.
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