DANISH State Railways (DSB) has confirmed it has placed a second order with Talgo, under a framework agreement signed in 2020, for the supply of eight Talgo 230 trains and spare parts, subject to the required approvals and financing being confirmed by the Danish Parliament.

This additional order has a value of €184m and will double the initial fleet order placed with Talgo for eight trains within the framework worth a total of €500m.

With a maximum speed of 200km/h, the Talgo 230 trains are wider than standard DSB rolling stock, meaning an increase in interior space and correspondingly in comfort for passengers.

Talgo also says that the lower weight of the new fleet will help DSB to contribute to Denmark’s sustainability goals of reducing its carbon emissions by 70% by 2030 and becoming carbon neutral by 2050.

The new fleet will be hauled by dual-voltage Siemens Vectron locomotives and its extra capacity will not only be useful for Danish domestic services but also on international routes such as Copenhagen - Hamburg, for which the first Talgo trains were ordered.

In February 2020 DSB awarded Talgo the contract to supply eight sets of locomotive-hauled coaches to operate Copenhagen - Hamburg international services from 2023, with each of the eight formations having capacity for 442 seated passengers and the coaches to be similar to the Talgo 230 inter-city coaches purchased by German Rail (DB) in 2019.

Two months later, in April 2020, DSB announced it would expand this order by more than 10%, expanding the capacity per train to 492 passengers due to encouraging ticket sales on the route before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

However, in January 2022 it was announced that the cars would now be delivered in 2024 rather than 2023, with DSB director of strategy and train equipment, Mr Jürgen Müller, saying that the Spanish manufacturer had announced it could not deliver the vehicles as planned. A Talgo spokesperson told IRJ that the impact of the pandemic on its operations was the cause of the delay. 

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