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Siemens Mobility The largest world wide manufacturer of the rail vehicles is Siemens Mobility with its network of daughter companies, cooperations and subcontractors. Siemens has products for all market segments as long as the word "traction" is involved, often supplemented with the words "high tech". Most famous Siemens products are undoubtedly its Inter City Express and Velaro trains found in just about every corner of the earth. For the locomotives Siemens offers a large product portfolio ranging from Taurus and other Eurosprinter locomotives to Eurorunners and the newest offering Vectron. In Russia and much of Europe the most famous locomotive today seems to be the Siemens-Sinara cooperative built "Granit", a powerful double or triple loco for pulling the 9000 metric ton trains across the Ural mountains. Another example of the successful cooperation in the East is manufacturing of several hundred Desiro ML RUS EMUs.  More on Siemens Mobility and its products... |
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The super high speed and high speed segments are covered with Reginas and soon also Zefiros (China, Italy). |
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Following is a short list of the regional manufacturers. This is not to say the regional manufacturers are insignificant. They have often just simply chosen to stay within their traditional working area or culture. Crossing boundaries might be very difficult for an American company in Europe, not understanding the true needs of the customer, or Alstom trying to evade its French roots and thinking. Within the class are also companies that have earlier tried to become international but afterwards chose to stay mostly in their area (like Alstom) and companies that have been very successful understanding their customers needs and offered competitive solutions to those (like Stadler Rail AG). |
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Some Local Rolling Stock Manufacturers |
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Fallen Flags in Manufacturing |
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Component Manufacturers On the left a Tågab TMYM from Sweden, the unit is reengined with an MTU diesel. While is according to personnel does not sound anything like the big EMD sound earlier, the locomotive is even more powerful. |
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For this segment we will later provide a page including Transmasholding, NEVZ and Siemens-Sinara, Ural Locomotives plus possibly some more players. |
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Regional North American Manufacturers General Electric and EMD, the Electro Motive Division owned by Caterpillar, are the two most visible manufacturers, but there are also a bunch of others like MPI, each specializing in their strong areas. GE is the leading manufacturer for the time and has acquired a dominant market share with its policy of providing an exceptionally good customer care.  More on Regional North American Manufacturers...
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Japanese Manufacturers We all know Japan for Shinkansens and the country's interesting designs for its narrow gauge networks. |
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| Chinese Manufacturers China has bought a huge amount of technology in several sectors during the last decades. One of the sectors is railroad rolling stock, where the country is now in process of implementing this technology itself and perfecting it to local use and even exports. |
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Korean Manufacturers |
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| Siemens Mobility | |
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Siemens has a wide offering to different markets. One of its flagship products is the class 406 ICE3 / Velaro unit. These super high speed trains dash between the Northern Germany and the countries on the West side of it: Belgium, France, Luxembourg and Holland. In the future also U.K. is within the Velaros reach. Velaros success is built in addition to the German engineering talent to the economical figures: the trains can deliver more customer places than the competing solutions with the locomotive(s) at the end(s). And it can deliver this at super high speed as one of the first manufacturers in the world. Velaros have been / are being exported or built in Belgium, China, France, Holland, United Kingdom, Russia and Spain and it is a strong candidate for a number of other markets as well. |
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Besides the popular Velaro Siemens has other offerings for the high speed customers. One of these is the Taurus (Eurosprinter ES64Ux) locomotive, of which three generations are in use. ÖBB, the Austrian Railways, is devoted to Taurus locomotives as its true multiuse locomotive. On high speed, the Tauruses are used in Railjet virtual EMUs formed of one or more Taurus locomotives and one or more fixed coach set. Each Taurus is semi permanently coupled with the coaches. The top speed of this kind of formation is 230 km/h, so it is well suited for the medium distance travel / in the journeys on the track that is not a true super high speed line.
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The next generation of the Siemens high speed EMUs will be called within Germany the ICx. Deutsche Bahn has ordered a large number of these EMUs replacing the older double decked stock and finally most of the ICE1 and ICE2 trains.
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Siemens has an extensive line of locomotives for use mainly in Europe and U.S. For understanding the product lines almost missing diesel variants you also have to understand the background of the company as a huge electric device manufacturer. Siemens with its well over hundred year roots has manufactured all kinds of products that have the electricity common for them, so for a Siemens to manufacture diesels in a large scale something would have to change first in the corporate culture. |
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| Bombardier | |
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Bombardier is best known for its line of airliners and all kinds of railroad rolling stock. The Bombardier also manufactures many heavier electric locomotives like IORE for LKAB in the far Nordic corner and Alp45DP which has been exported to U.S. both as electric and electric plus heavy diesel loco. Similar locos are in use today in China as well. |
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The IORE locomotives haul the northern Scandinavia rich magnetite and other minerals to the foundries and Narvik, Norway and Luleå, Sweden harbors for loading to the ships. 26 units are in daily use and 6 more in order to fulfill the world's growing need for raw materials. If you are interested in the operations, companies and environment around these Europe's largest locos, you might find the following links helpful: |
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Another example is the Swedish T44 loco, of which Bombardier has been building numerous to class Td for the operator Green Cargo. |
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Bombardier Regina train sets are highly popular in the Nordic in Sweden. You can almost say that every community respecting itself owns a batch of these X50 class trains for its needs. With advanced design it was no wonder Bombardier decided to use one of these as a test bed for future Zefiro high speed trains components. Extensive test were made during two years after which the train in the picture on the left was returned to its owner Transitio. As the Transition train is a "Green Train" Bombardier is starting a new program with it. Now the unit is used for ECO4 program, meaning Energy, Effectivity, Economy and Ecology, all extremely important to any train operator. It looks like the tests again will be conducted in highly developed Sweden. |
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| Stadler Bussnang AG | |
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Stadler has grown rapidly in the latest years due to its approach to successfully tailor its products to a wide range of customer needs (not to anything the customer may ask). It has been so successful that it has even replaced former large builder Alstom on many markets. The train sets which are called Flirt, Kiss, GTW2/6 and GTW 2/8 are both cheaper and technically much more advanced than the offering of the French company. Currently Stadler is by volume the third largest manufacturer after Siemens and Bombardier. Some of the important forces driving Stadler Rail AG forward are its above others engineering talent, production capcity adaption and its capcity to be able to move the manufactuiring also outside Switzerland, since the Swiss currency is very strong making Swiss products expensive to others. |
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Currently the nose design is being changed to more crash resistant model, adapted specifically to conform with the European Union norms. |
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GTW 2/6 and 2/8 DMUs and EMUs GTWs are a product with ingenious engineering combined with unmatched modularity. Since many GTW units have their power provided by a diesel module, these forma great offering to the markets inaccessible for the Flirt EMUs. |
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Stadler Locomotives In addition to its respectable line of EMUs and DMUs Stadler manufactures many other vehicles for rail use. Recently the new Swiss switcher / road switcher locomotives have received a lot of positive publicity. When travelling in Switzerland you quickly start noticing many little electric or diesel locomotives on the sidings of stations. These are now being replaced with modern electric and hybrid (electric+diesel) locomotives. The new locomotives of Swiss class Ee 922 (dual electric 15kV 16,7 Hz and 25kV 50Hz) and Eem 923 (hybrid electric and diesel) are in fact quite powerful despite the fact that they look little. SBB's passenger division has ordered 21 Ee 922 and SBB Cargo 30 Eem 923 for switching and the "last mile". Expect to see these units in all kinds of work in local and medium range in Switzerland. |
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| Regional European Manufacturers in Alphabetical Order | |
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Alstom |
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Ansaldo-Breda Ansaldo-Breda is one of the newer manufacturers with high ambitions. Product portfolio has i.e. IC4 trains for Danish DSB + high speed Albatross V20 trains for Belgium/Netherlands. There are discussions about Ansaldobreda's and Bombardier's fusion, the companies could together create super high speed rolling stock for the emerging markets in Europe, China, U.S. and Russia. Ansaldo-Breda also sells it's products worldwide. |
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Talgo |
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The factory is located in Kuusankoski, just a stones throw north of Kouvola in southern Finland. |
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Transtech Transtech Oy is a medium sized Finnish manufacturer for mainly coaching stock, trams and special equipment. The IC2 coaches in use and being readied for the moment on the production line have many variations ranging from Extra / Business class and 2nd class day coaches to double decked sleepers. There are also double decked driving trailers and restaurant cars arriving in 2013. The latest expansion of the product line of Transtech is for the trams of Helsinki, the capital of Finland. The previous Adtranz manufactured low floored trams, although modern, have been a great disappointment, so the city of Helsinki decided to go forward with the manufacturer known to be able to manufacture trams being able to run often steep curves of Helsinki. It will be interesting to see what the next extensions will be. |
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At Innotrans 2012 Vossloh also showed many other innovative product lines besides diesel locomotives. |
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| Regional North American Manufacturers in Alphabetical Order | |
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EMD - Electro Motive Division (part of Caterpillar) After EMD regained its independence from GM in early 2000s the most successful models in the North American markets have been the SD70ACe and SD70M-2. For the export markets EMD has produced the very successful Class66 (JT42CWR / JT42CWRM) locomotives, which is now to replaced by a newer model. At the same time London, Ontario plant has is closing following the fate of the famous La Grande plant, that served the company during its heyday. Caterpillar as a new owner has supplied many older diesels with its new refurbishing, latest technology main engine, electronics and cooling modules. This gives additional decades for many classic road locomotives and gives something interesting to see for the rail pros and railfans. |
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General Electric GE, the largest corporation in the world, has a railroad division as well. The most known products for this area are its North American diesel electric locomotives. These locomotives have gained a dominant market share on their home market during the last 3 decades, quite an achievement from a relative newcomer in the field! With US market falling in 2009-2010 for all players the GE foresaw this and managed to sell several hundred locomotives of its older model (nothing wrong with it, just the emissions are a bit (not much) different) to China and to ex. Soviet countries. There is also a demand in Russia to modernize aging fleet of M62s, and the GE has been keen on trying to enter this huge market as well. For the next generation GE is developing hybrid locomotive, which was supposed to enter road testing phase sometime in 2010, but so far has insistently refused to show up. The technology is there, but is the demand? Previous Generation (export markets, second hand U.S. markets): AC44i, AC4400, C44-9W Current Generation (US market): ES44AC, ES44DC Next Generation (all markets): Hybrid locomotive, probably on a different platform from the previous, since the current model has little room for batteries. |
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MPI, Motive Power Inc. |
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| © 4rail.net Railroad Reference 2004 - 2013 - Created 2008 John McKey, Ilkka Siissalo, Refurbished 18.10.2011 John McKey, Updated 10.3.2013 |
On the left one of the latest Talgo product: The Avril super high speed train can reach speeds of up to 380 km/h (236 mph). For the moment the train is running test runs for the future customers. 
