Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) and Siemens Mobility have signed a framework agreement for the delivery of day and 8 trains with a total of up to 700 passenger coaches over the next five years.
The agreement has a total volume of more than €1.5 billion when all of the agreement’s services have been called up. At the signing of the agreement, ÖBB placed its first call for eight nine-car trains for day service and 13 seven-car trains for night service.
The Viaggio coaches will be operated with ÖBB’s current fleet of Siemens Taurus locomotives. Commissioning of the first trains is planned for 2022. The passenger coaches will be manufactured at the Siemens factory in Vienna, Austria. The framework agreement can also be extended beyond 2023 by ÖBB.
“With the new trainsets for day and night service, ÖBB is systematically continuing its campaign to further enhance passenger comfort. With the additional trains for the Nightjet, we’ll be underpinning our leading role in overnight travel in Europe,” said Andreas Matthä, CEO of ÖBB-Holding AG.
“Being awarded one of Europe’s largest passenger coach tenders shows that our Viaggios are the benchmark for modern long-distance transport. They are based on over 160 years of passenger coach experience. Viaggio passenger trains offer great flexibility across borders as well as state-of-the-art passenger comfort – combined with low maintenance costs and high operational availability,” said Sabrina Soussan, CEO of Siemens Mobility.
The contract covers the delivery of all types of passenger coaches, including cab cars, multipurpose cars, first- and second-class cars, as well as sleeping and couchette cars. The trains will be operated in Austria, Germany, Italy and Switzerland. If needed, there is an option to equip the coaches for use in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.
The basic variant for daytime transport is designed as a low-floor coach with extra-wide doors to facilitate quick and comfortable boarding and alighting. The daytime trains have a seating capacity of 520, while the night trains offer 100 seats and 160 couchettes. The trains are fully equipped to accommodate passengers with limited mobility. The Viaggio coaches offer improved energy efficiency, achieved through such features as LED interior lighting, air conditioning with a heat pump function in both cooling and heating modes, as well as a fresh air supply regulated by the CO2 content in the interior air. The Viaggio trainsets allow highly flexible configurations that cover all operating requirements.
