Posted 12th December 2011 | 3 Comments
Rolling stock hitch delays German trains to London
DELAYS in the production of Siemens trains are reported to be the reason why Deutsche Bahn has been forced to postpone its plans to provide international services from London until 2015.
The state-owned German operator had announced its aspirations for services between London, Germany and the Netherlands in October last year.
2013 was the official date, although the company flirted for a while with the possibility of starting in time for the Olympics next year.
The launch had recently been confirmed as December 2013, when DB would have begun offering three daily trains from London.
But it is understood that delays in producing the trainsets needed for the new routes have put back the DB launch until 2015.
DB and Eurostar had fought successfully to have trains with distributed traction allowed through the Tunnel, rather than those with a power car at each end, and Eurostar is still on track to begin its own services beyond its traditional Paris/Brussels routes, to Amsterdam and Geneva, in 2014.
It is also buying ten 320km/h Siemens sets for its new services, which are expected to be delivered on time.
Reader Comments:
Views expressed in submitted comments are that of the author, and not necessarily shared by Railnews.
Rich, Calais, France
The regional Eurostars were acquired by an enterprising company: SNCF. They run from the Nord Pas-de-Calais coast (Boulogne, Calais etc) down to Lille and on to Paris.
Philip Russell, Carlisle, United Kingdom
Its a shame that some enterprising company can not manage to aquire some of the former regional Eurostar trains that we must have spent millions building and launch a competing service far more rapidly than this constantly floundering D.B. scheme
HH, Birmingham
Thats the first result of Camerons 'succesful ' EU conference 'defending' the industry that got the UK Europe and the World into the mess we are all in.
The myopic small minded attitude of EuroAntis are going to do tremedous damage to UK business.
The odd thing about them is that most defend the rules of clubs to exclude non members and then suggest we are better of outside of Europe. Truth is they want to be big fish in little pool.