Motive Power trends in Central Europe

While each country’s state railway traditionally had its own relations to the locomotive builders of that country (and almost every country used to have its own set of manufacturers), the trend nowadays is to buy standardized locomotive types that are interoperable (or at least meant to be capable of being interoperable) between various countries and rail networks. This is probably due to two main reasons:
* Consolidation in the railroad industry has caused the disappearance of many of those traditional builders - nowadays, only three major companies are engaged in the business of building (electric) locomotives on a large scale: Alstom, Bombardier and Siemens
* Deregulation of the european (freight) railroad network (move towards open-access) has changed the strategy of a lot of the former national railways (which have become privatized companies) towards providing service over foreign networks as well as their traditional national networks. In addition, new startup operators have joined the market - and these often take advantage of the services offered by locomotive leasing (e.g. Angel Trains) and rental (e.g. Siemens Dispolok) companies to fulfill their motive power needs.

Thus, the three major builders have each introduced their own family of electric four-axle (freight and/or passenger) locomotives in the 4000-6000 kW range that are offered in multiple variants (power systems, train control systems) according to the needs of the buyers:
* Alstom Prima
* Bombardier TRAXX
* Siemens EuroSprinter

Posted in: Uncategorized | November 16, 2004 2:28 pm