THE Baden-Württemberg State Institute for Rail Vehicles (SFBW) has selected Alstom to retrofit 118 regional trains with ETCS and ATO under a €130m contract.
The contract follows an agreement with DB Regio last month to equip 215 class 423 and 430 S-Bahn trains as part of German Rail’s (DB) Stuttgart Digital Node Lighthouse project to digitalise the Stuttgart railway network, which is part of Stuttgart 21.
The 118 regional trains come from various suppliers and will be equipped with ETCS levels 2 and 3 as well as ATO at GoA 2. Drivers will remain in the cab at GoA 2, but the trains will operate autonomously, helping to reduce headways and increase network capacity to offer more services to passengers.
The initial upgrade will be completed by 2024 and will be updated to comply with the new European Technical Specifications for Interoperability (TSI) 2022 by 2027. Alstom will also provide maintenance for the software used on the regional trains.
As part of their innovation agreement, Alstom and SFBW will also define the requirements for Train Integrity Monitoring (TIM), Future Railway Mobile Communication System (FRMC) upgrade capability, Train Capability and for Open CCS On-board Reference Architecture (OCORA).
Alstom will carry out the project at its signalling site in Berlin, which will cooperate closely with the ETCS competence centre in Charleroi, Belgium. Other locations involved in the various project phases are Braunschweig, Salzgitter, Mannheim and Hennigsdorf in Germany as well as Bangalore, India, Bucharest, Romania and Lyon-Villeurbanne, France.
Onboard installation will take place close to Stuttgart or in Hennigsdorf.
“In addition to equipping Stuttgart’s S-Bahn trains with our latest digital signalling technology, we are pleased to now be retrofitting the network’s regional trains as well,” says MrMichael Konias, head of Digital and Integrated Systems at Alstom for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. “This will enable us to make an even greater contribution to the Stuttgart Digital Node lighthouse project and to the digitalisation of German rail transport.
“The assignment once again underlines our growth in the field of signalling technology and the positive synergies resulting from the Bombardier Transportation acquisition.”
