SWITZERLAND: Rhätische Bahn has awarded Stadler a contract to supply 27 electric multiple-units, with an option for up to 20 more. The 1 000 mm gauge EMUs are to be built at Stadler’s Altenrhein plant, with the first scheduled to enter service in summer 2019.
The four-car air-conditioned EMUs with a service speed of 100 km/h and maximum speed of 120 km/h will be 76·44 m long, with 35 first and 137 standard class seats, two wheelchair spaces and areas for bicycles, skis, sporting equipment, prams and luggage. They will be designed to be ‘extremely robust’, according to Stadler, with extensive low-floor areas and doors designed for easy boarding and alighting.
The SFr285m contract was signed by RhB Director Renato Fasciati and Stadler CEO Peter Spuhler in Zürich on June 30. ‘The procurement of these multiple-units is the largest rolling stock procurement project in the history of Rhätische Bahn’, said Fasciati. ‘The new trains will thoroughly modernise our fleet and allow us to significantly increase our productivity.
‘By awarding the contract to Stadler, who have already produced our Allegra multiple-units and Alvra articulated trains, we are working together with a partner that we can count on, with whom we have a relationship that spans decades, and who is extremely familiar with the special requirements that our mountain railway places on our vehicles’, said Fasciati.
