Alstom (www.alstom.com) and Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS), the national railway operator in the Netherlands, have officially opened a new ‘fitting line’ dedicated to the InterCity Next Generation (ICNG) trains to be produced in Alstom’s Katowice facility — one of the company’s largest sites world-wide.

This new facility, which features the latest technologies and processes designed to improve productivity and reduce lead times, covers 6,500m².

The fitting halls include 20 work-stations that cover the full process from pre-fitting to cabling and interior fitting; carriage body shell welding and erection, painting and final testing are performed in separate halls.

Over 500 employees are currently involved in the ICNG project in different Alstom units throughout Europe, with over 110 on this new fitting line in Katowice. It is designed to produce one train carriage every working day.

According to the terms of the contract awarded to Alstom in July 2016, Alstom will supply NS with 79 Coradia Stream trains in the InterCity version.

These have a maximum speed of 200kph, and the total passenger capacity of the fleet is 25,000 seats.

The complete trains are based on three types of carriage — driving, intermediate and end carriages. This configuration allows the length of trains to vary from three to 10 carriages.

For NS, Alstom will supply both eight-carriage and five-carriage versions.

The first trains will be delivered from January 2020 onwards and will run on the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Breda high-speed line in 2021 and on the Den Haag-Eindhoven line in 2022.

The total contract is worth over 800 million euros, with options for more trains.

Alstom’s Coradia Stream was designed and developed in Saint-Ouen (France) and Salzgitter (Germany) and is being manufactured in Katowice — a 250,000m² engineering and manufacturing site for metros and regional trains; it is also a world-wide competency centre for metros.

Currently, the Katowice site has over 2,000 employees and is running 19 projects for 10 countries around Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Australia.

Alstom also co-operates with almost 470 Polish suppliers, not only for its factories in Poland but also for projects being developed at 27 Alstom sites world-wide.