Now… Stadler is known for giving its trains acronyms that make interesting words – there’s the FLIRT, the KISS, the SMILE, the WINK, the TINA and the TANGO. So when it was presenting a train called ‘FART’, it did raise some eyebrows.
However, this train from Stadler Tailor Made is actually named after its Swiss operator, Ferrovie Autolinee Regionali Ticinesi SA.
The train on display at InnoTrans was one of 8 that will run on the Centovalli railway that connects Ticino and Piedmont. One special feature of this railway line is that it has two operators, the second being the Italian SSIF.
The FART train is an electric metre-gauge multiple unit that connects Switzerland and Italy. Trains have been running on this line for 100 years. The line, which is just 52km in length (32 in Italy, 20 in Switzerland) has a staggering 83 bridges and 31 tunnels. Claudio Blotti, Director of FART, pointed out that this railway line had been included by Lonely Planet among the ten most spectacular railway journeys in Europe.
“For a successful small railway, a vehicle acquisition is of course an extraordinary event. The last vehicles were delivered in the 1990s. From this perspective, a vehicle procurement takes place once in a lifetime, let's say, or in a generation. This is of course an extraordinary situation for the project team, for the director. Here at Stadler, one or two vehicles roll out of the factories almost every day.
“For us, this is daily business, but not for a railway operator. That's why we are all the more delighted when we are allowed to hand over such a vehicle. As you may know, the vehicle labelled FART is celebrating its 100th anniversary. And what could be better than receiving new vehicles for a birthday?”
The order for 8 vehicles was received in 2020 – 4 three-car vehicles and 4 four-car vehicles. The vehicles are coming from Stadler’s Tailor Made division because of its special features: it’s a metre-gauge railway, running under 1350 volts across an international border and with some boundary conditions in the routing of the tracks.
“The very special thing about it is that due to the volume of passengers – school transport, seasonal holiday transport – that we can configure these vehicles differently, two-, three-, four-car trains. We can separate and reassemble them within about six minutes. Each vehicle is equipped with a drive system, a car bogie and a trolley bogie, so the journey has maximum operational flexibility with this vehicle.”
Each train has between 109 and 142 seats. They are all designed to be family friendly, wheelchair friendly and suitable for cyclists, with up to four bicycle spots per train.
“The fleet renewal will enable us to offer a more regular service, which meets modern mobility needs. In regional transport, the new trains will increase capacity and improve frequency with hourly services between Locarno and Camedo and, from 2028, half-hourly services between Locarno and Intragna.”
All these locations are in Switzerland. But the new fleet will also benefit cross-border travel.
“At cross-border level, the new trains will offer more convenient connections to Domodossola and therefore better quality for everyone. The new trains will provide more comfortable connections to Domodossola at cross-border level, and thus better quality for all those travelling between Switzerland and Italy, as well as for those travelling to western Switzerland via the Simplon axis.”
Also in attendance at the presentation of the FART train was Matteo Corti, Director General of SSIF. He praised Stadler’s work on this project, both regarding the technical implementation in terms of what the infrastructure required and what the operators needed as a result of the kinds of passengers that use the line, and regarding the regulatory landscape, given that there are two operators in two different countries. Maintaining flexibility by creating different car configurations also required separate approvals.
This is a successful tailor-made project for Stadler with just 8 trains. It stands in stark contrast to another train Stadler was presenting at InnoTrans, the new underground for Berlin, which is the biggest rolling stock order for BVG in its history. Very different projects, but both perfectly suited to their use cases and both highlighting perfectly how different and how well suited rail as a mode of transport can be.
