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 This is the prospect that would be available to Australian rail travellers if the government invested in the newly unveiled French high-speed train, the AGV.
Alstom Transport, the French engineering giant that has won a further contract to supply 18 more X’Trapolis six-car trainsets for Victoria's suburban network, has unveiled the AGV, its latest very high speed train, capable of reaching a commercial speed of 360 kmh.
This single deck, state-of-the-art train incorporates articulated carriages, a technology which contributed to the success of France’s TGV train, and a new distributed drive system. The AGV has been designed to reach a commercial speed of 360 kph and already has its first customer, Italy’s new railway operator, NTV.
The AGV is the first train in the world to feature an articulated architecture (with the bogies located between the carriages), a solution that is claimed to provide the highest levels of safety, combined with a distributed drive system (the train’s motors being located on the bogies, under the train), an innovation that considerably increases the potential number of seats onboard the train by eliminating the need for locomotives. This novel architecture will give operators great flexibility. They will be able to vary the length of their trains (from 7 to 14 carriages, and from 250 and 650 seats) depending on demand. It will also substantially lower maintenance costs.
The AGV is particularly environmentally friendly, with a 15% lower energy consumption than its main competitors. The AGV’s novel traction system has already been tested under extreme conditions, since it was used in the train which set the world rail speed record on 3 April 2007 at 574.8 kmh.
Patrick Kron, chairman and chief executive officer of Alstom, said: “We have developed this train using our own funds, a very unusual approach in the railway industry, because we understood that the market for very high speed rail travel was about to diversify. In order to maintain our leadership, we needed to broaden and update our range of products. The AGV has arrived on the market just at the time when very high speed rail travel is undergoing a new expansion phase, not only in its traditional markets, but also in many developing countries”.
Over the past 25 years, Alstom has sold more than 650 TGV trains, becoming the world leader in this high technology field. Its trains have carried, in complete safety, nearly one and a half billion passengers over 2 billion km - or 6,500 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon. Alstom has just won two major export orders from Argentina and Morocco for its TGV Duplex trains.
Italy’s new railway operator, NTV, has placed firm orders for 25 trains (with options for 10 more), and has signed a maintenance contract with Alstom. Production of the first trains will begin in mid-2008, and they will be delivered from 2010 onwards.
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