Mr Mauro Moretti, CEO of Trenitalia (pictured), Mr Lutz Bertling, president and COO of Bombardier Transportation, and Mr Aldo Cingolani, CEO of Bertone Design, were among the 250 guests present during the unveiling ceremony.

Trenitalia placed a €1.54bn order with a consortium of Bombardier and AnsaldoBreda for 50 trains in 2010. The eight-car train, which has capacity for 485 passengers, will be tested at speeds in excess of 400km/h ahead of its entry into service in early 2015.

Preliminary testing has taken place at Vado Ligure since April and this will now be stepped up to operations on the Genoa - Savona line which is accessible from the Vado Ligure site. Five trains will be used during the testing process which will include use of the Velim test circuit in the Czech Republic, while high-speed line tests will take place on the Milan - Turin and Milan - Rome high-speed lines. Testing is scheduled to be completed by the end of September 2014.

The train will have a top operating speed of 360km/h and will be certified for cross-border operation. Trenitalia is reportedly exploring opportunities to operate the train outside of its home market and Moretti confirmed to IRJ that it hopes to become Europe's third-ranked high-speed train operator.

"We want to be a real competitor at the European level after German Rail (DB) and French National Railways (SNCF)," he says.

For an in-depth look at the design features of the Frecciarossa 1000 read the exclusive report in the July issue of IRJ, p 30.