Nov 14 2005
Siemens Transportation Systems will work with its Chinese partner company, Tangshan Locomotive & Rolling Stock Works, to build 60 high-speed trains for China. The order content share allotted to Siemens is worth 669 million euros. A contract with the Chinese Ministry of Railways was signed today in Berlin by Siemens President and CEO Klaus Kleinfeld and Railway Minster Liu Zhijun on the occasion of a state visit to Germany by China’s President Hu Jintao. “This contract means that China will be supplied with the most up-to-date technology for high-speed trains. This underlines the leading role of Siemens as a driver of rail technology. We are expecting that, with this project, we will be able to expand the long-term strategic partnership between the German and Chinese rail industries” declared Kleinfeld at the contract signing ceremony.
The trains, which can travel at speeds of up to 300 kilometers an hour, are to be used initially on the Beijing–Tianjin route as of 2008 and will be deployed on other high-speed routes later on. The trainsets have a total length of 200 meters and have seats for a total of more than 600 passengers.
The design and planning work for the Chinese high-speed train (the "CRH 3") will be carried out at the Siemens plants in Erlangen and in Krefeld-Uerdingen, Germany. Production of the first three trains and several important components will likewise take place in Germany. The rest of the trains will be built in China by Tangshan Locomotive & Rolling Stock Works, a production plant of the China Northern Locomotive & Rolling Stock Industry (Group) Corporation (CNR). Part of the contractual terms and conditions involves support and technology transfer in connection with production of the trains. Also involved in the project and in technology transfer are numerous German and European suppliers of subsystems and components for the high-speed trains and they will also be cooperating with their Chinese counterparts.
The CRH 3 is based on the “Velaro”, a Siemens platform for high-speed trains and a development which began with the ICE 3 for Deutsche Bahn (DB AG). The advantage of the Velaro platform is to be found in its use of distributed traction technology. All the equipment is accommodated under the floor of the high-speed train so that the trains have approximately 25 per cent more seats for the same length of train, a uniform exterior design for all parts of the vehicle and also low infrastructure maintenance costs due to lower axle loads.
Owing to its economic efficiency and use of top technology, this “Velaro” concept for high-speed trains has generated a lot of interest among a number of railways around the world. In the meantime, Deutsche Bahn has ordered 63 ICE 3 trains, which could, for example, enable passengers to travel between Frankfurt and Cologne in just one and a half hours at top speeds of up to 300 km/h and thus provide an attractive alternative to air travel. For cross-border transport to France, Siemens is currently equipping five ICE 3 trains on behalf of Deutsche Bahn. Siemens is also building 26 “Velaro E” type high-speed trains for the Spanish railways which will be used on the new 625 kilometer-long high-speed line between Madrid and Barcelona from 2006 onwards.
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