TMH Begins Delivery of 1300 Passenger Coaches to Egypt

Transmashholding has started delivering on the order of 1,300 passenger coaches for Egyptian National Railways (ENR).

On 25 June TMH delivered the first 22 passenger coaches to ENR. They arrived at the port of Alexandria with representatives from the Ministry of Transport present. A further ten coaches were shipped from Russia on 19 June and should arrive in Egypt in the first week of July. One coach arrived in Egypt for testing in April 2020. These 33 coaches – the test coach, the 22 recent arrivals and the ten en route – are third-class vehicles with dynamic ventilation.

TMH passenger coach arrives in Alexandria
TMH passenger coach for Egyptian National Railways arrives in Alexandria

The standard-gauge coaches are being transported by truck from the Tver production site to the port of Saint Petersburg. From there, they are loaded on to a ship and transported to Alexandria. TVZ technical experts have also travelled to Egypt to perform the official hand-over procedure. That includes checking the brakes on all the coaches. The coaches will now travel to Cairo and enter commercial service on 1 July.

David John, Chief Technical Officer and ENR Project Director, TMH International, said:

“We are extremely pleased to have been able, despite the challenging context of the Covid-19 pandemic, to deliver on-time the first coaches to ENR and to successfully complete the certification test campaign in Hungary and Egypt. This is the result of the joint efforts of a multi-country team in Egypt, Russia, and Hungary, working in close cooperation with the customer.”

The test coach that Egypt received was transported on the last ship leaving Slovenia before the coronavirus lockdown. This gave ENR a two-month period during which it could perform running tests on its network. Because of their inability to travel, TMH staff in Russia developed a full training kit and documentation pack for ENR. They also relied on TÜV Nord Egypt’s technical knowledge to oversee the testing alongside the THM local team.

BME, a certification body based in Hungary, should deliver the certificates of conformity for the passenger coaches by the end of the month.

The 1,300 passenger coaches for ENR will add an additional 30 percent capacity to the existing fleet. They will also deliver huge increases in fleet reliability and safety. Egypt has experienced a growing number of rail accidents as a result of fleet and infrastructure obsolescence. Now it has embarked on a large-scale modernisation programme of its railways. Consequently, TMH Hungary won its biggest-ever rolling stock order (in 2018). The contract comes with a five-year warranty period. THM Egypt is also on hand to provide maintenance services.

The project is financed by the Hungarian and Russian Eximbanks under state guarantee of both countries. 51 percent of the materials are of Hungarian origin. 680 coaches will be manufactured in Hungary in total, making this contract the largest ever rolling stock  manufacturing project in the country.

TMH and its local partner MV recently acquired the Dunakeszi site. It will begin production in Q3 of 2020. The remaining coaches in the order are being manufactured at TVZ in Russia.

The passenger coaches have an expected life-cycle of 40 years and have been designed to cope with temperatures of up to 50 degrees. The order comprises five different models, ranging from third-class coaches with dynamic ventilation (500 units) and third-class air-conditioned units (500) to second-class (180 units) and first-class (90) units with HVAC and second-class restaurant cars (30 units). Transmashholding will deliver the order in full over a 40-month period.

Transmashholding provides 30 different types of passenger coaches for both the standard-gauge and the Russian-gauge markets. These include single and double-decker cars, sleeper cars and special-purpose cars such as restaurant and mail cars. The TVZ site manufactures a total of 1,200 passenger cars annually.

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