Patrick Kron, Chairman and CEO of Alstom, has declared his great satisfaction at the SNCF’s signing of the contract option for 40 additional double-deck Euroduplex very high speed trains.

Taking into account a possible cancellation of 10 trains, Alstom booked an order corresponding to 30 train sets in the last quarter of the 2011/12 fiscal year, for a value of around €900 million.  This new order is included in the framework of the contract placed with Alstom by SNCF on 27 June 2007.  The 40 trains are in addition to the firm tranche of 55 Euroduplex train sets currently under construction, the first of which entered commercial service on 11 December 2011 on the new Rhine-Rhône high speed line and the last units being delivered mid-2015.

The additional train sets will be delivered from 2015.  Their manufacture will contribute to the workload of Alstom Transport’s La Rochelle site which builds the passenger cars as well as the workload of other sites in France: Belfort (locomotives), Reichshoffen (end cars), Le Creusot (bogies), Ornans (traction systems), Le Petit Quevilly (locomotive transformers), Tarbes (electrical units and traction equipment) and Villeurbanne (electronic control systems).  Charleroi (Belgium) for auxiliary inverters and Montreal (Canada) for passenger information systems are also part of the manufacturing scheme. A total of 1,500 people on these sites work each day on high speed rail transport projects at Alstom.

The main French suppliers for this project are Faiveley Transport, Logitrade, COMECA, CEIT, TFCM and Association Bretagne Atelier.  Together with the other small to medium sized companies involved in the French rail industry, they employ 6,000 people in France.

Intended for use on the French, German, Swiss and Luxembourg networks, the Euroduplex trains contain signalling equipment which is compatible with all European networks. They are equipped with traction systems adapted to the different electric currents used across Europe. Some of these train sets can also run in Spain.  Benefiting from Alstom’s unique and long experience in the very high speed rail market, Euroduplex trains offer the best operating costs per corridor and the highest return per seat.

With the taking-up of this option, Patrick Kron announced that Alstom has proposed to end its legal process in the London High Court, opened to contest the call for tender launched in 2009 by Eurostar to renew its fleet.