ADTRANZ has chosen the Siegen plant in Germany to head its Bogies Product Unit, which employs a total of 900 people with an annual turnover of DM500m. Responsible for design as well as production undertaken at Derby (Great Britain), Helsingborg (Sweden) and Winterthur (Switzerland), Siegen has a workforce of 300 and carries out the machining and final assembly of welded bogie frames fabricated in Hungary.
Production facilities at Siegen have recently benefited from a DM10m investment programme, including new painting facilities and the installation of equipment transferred from the Adtranz Portugal plant in Amadora, where bogie production is to be phased out - as at sites in Italy and Poland. Siegen now has the capacity to produce up to 3500 bogies a year; 90% of its workload comes from within the company, which has developed 32 new bogie designs in recent years.
Current production at Siegen includes a 7m long 30 tonne three-axle bogie (above) with nose-suspended AC traction motors. Under a contract worth DM12·7m due for completion in 2004, 39 of these bogies are being built for the nine Octeon electric locos that Adtranz is supplying to MTAB of Sweden (RG 5.99 p277).
Burnaby start-up
ON MAY 24 Bombardier Transportation officially opened its Centre for Advanced Transit Systems at Burnaby, British Columbia, adjacent to the operations and maintenance centre for Vancouver’s SkyTrain automated metro. The facility had begun work in April on 60 cars ordered for SkyTrain Line 2 in October 1998 at a cost of C$165m (RG 9.99 p555). The first vehicles are due to be delivered for testing this autumn.
With 165 staff, the Burnaby plant will also serve as a centre of excellence for operations and maintenance training, and promote SkyTrain as ’a world-class model for urban transportation solutions’ according to Bombardier. Speaking on May 24, Bombardier Transportation’s President, Mass Transit - North America, Jacques Laparé said that with the opening of Burnaby, the company was ’strategically positioned to take full advantage of emerging opportunities in the Pacific Rim’.
