Pictures of the Future      Spring 2008

Flexible Family

The locomotives of the Eurosprinter family can be flexibly adapted to each customer’s requirements. They have been designed to support cross-border rail traffic—and thus benefit railroad operators and passengers alike.

When it comes to rail traffic, Europe is still far from united. On the continent there are several different track gauges, five voltage systems, and as many as 26 different train protection systems. "It’s like in the Middle Ages, when every city used different measuring units," laments Ulrich Fösel, product manager for locomotives at Siemens Mobility in Erlangen. "No uniform standards, just a mishmash of European particularism."

This patchwork system meant that trains had to stop at national borders and change locomotives before they could travel on. Such delays were not only costly for passengers, but resulted in a competitive handicap for freight transport in comparison with trucks.

Since the 1990s, Siemens engineers have been working intensively on this problem. Their solution is called the platform concept. The principle behind that name is a family of locomotives that can be easily adapted to the requirements of individual countries and customers. With an auxiliary equipment set, such trains can operate with as many as four different voltage systems, and are thus capable of cross-border travel. These convertible locomotives, known as Eurosprinters, are now used by numerous European railroad operators.

Although the concept seems obvious, it could not be implemented for a long time due to political conditions. "Up to the 1980s, state-owned railroads developed locomotives themselves and merely issued production orders to manufacturers," explains Thomas Eisele, the Siemens platform manager responsible for the latest version of the Eurosprinter. "Today, on the other hand, locomotive development is done entirely by the manufacturers, so it’s important, particularly for economic reasons, to support multiple markets at the same time."

The youngest member of the Eurosprinter family is the first version to conform completely to the platform concept. The ES64U4 consists of the basic locomotive—the locomotive body, bogies, and motor—plus additional packages the customer can select individually. These options contain everything the locomotive needs to operate in a given country, such as a voltage adapter and a train protection system, plus a signal lighting system. To accommodate the wide range of specifications of various railroad companies and the large number of special signals used—for instance for train shunting or wrong-way travel—Siemens developed a combination of halogen lamps and LEDs that can meet all requirements with respect to signal brightness and color.

To date, Siemens has developed country-specific packages for Germany, Austria, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. Other packages are in the planning stage. To transport goods or people across Europe, a company purchases the appropriate packages and switches over from one to the other at the border. No locomotive exchange is necessary.

These customer packages make it possible, despite a high degree of standardization, to individualize each Eurosprinter. The result is customized locomotives that consist of preexisting components in different combinations of the basic locomotive with the appropriate country-specific or customer-specific packages. "It’s much like the auto industry, where the customer can order many extras," says Eisele.

But without advances in technology, all this would have remained a pipe dream. Having multiple voltage and train protection systems in one locomotive would have been too expensive and bulky. In Germany, for instance, locomotives are low and wide, but in Switzerland, because of the many different tunnels, they are narrow and tall. Thanks to more compact technology, Siemens can now produce locomotives that are both slender and low in profile, so they can travel in both countries.

Special on Locomotives. Manufacturers and customers alike benefit from the modular approach. For Siemens, the advantage is that development costs are lower and the locomotive can be produced and marketed economically—a significant advantage when production quantities are small. Customers also benefit from short delivery times, since 90 percent of the locomotive is composed of standard parts. And rail operators can implement joint maintenance concepts and be confident that replacement parts will remain available for many years to come.

But above all, the Eurosprinter creates new opportunities for freight rail traffic. "This locomotive provides its owners with a great competitive advantage," explains Werner Buchberger of ÖBB Traktion. "So we’ll be able to serve our markets fast and without hassles"—markets like Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. "Railroad operators can therefore use entirely new business models based on cross-border traffic."  Eurosprinter is also important in maintaining or gaining market share. Thanks to the locomotive’s multisystem capability, ÖBB can, for example, guarantee its customer Audi just-in-time delivery, with a scheduling uncertainty of mere minutes, on the rail line between the Audi plants in Ingolstadt, Germany, and Györ, Hungary. "Without such an assurance, these shipments would probably have been shifted to trucks," Buchberger concludes.

The adaptability of the Eurosprinter is also very important to locomotive leasing companies such as MRCE Dispolok GmbH in Munich. "We can respond flexibly to market changes, for instance when the flow of freight traffic changes," says Alex Dworaczek, head of Dispolok Fleet and Technology Management. "Then we can convert the locomotives and equip them with another set of appropriate country packages." And this flexible concept reduces the risk for the operator. "You can use a plug-and-play approach as you install individual components in different locomotives. Without the platform concept, our business would certainly be more difficult," says Dworaczek.

Passenger traffic benefits too, as delays for locomotive changes are eliminated. For instance, on the Vienna-Prague-Berlin line there are still three locomotive changes, because there are two different voltage systems in the Czech Republic alone. "With Eurosprinter, it will become possible to save 40 to 50 minutes on that line," Buchberger says. "In 2008, we’re expecting approval for the Czech Republic. In 2009, the through train could be a reality."

The platform concept will incorporate further advances in the next Eurosprinter generation. "The locomotive can be delivered either as a fast passenger locomotive or as a slow freight version," says Ulrich Fösel. What’s more, it will be available for several gauge sizes. The first customer—this year already—will be the Portuguese railway company CP.
                                                                                                                 Christian Buck