Eight EURO6000s For CAPTRAIN España
posted on 4th May 2023 07:35
On 3 May 2023 CAPTRAIN España, the largest alternative railway operator on the Iberian Peninsula, has signed a contract with Stadler Valencia to purchase eight new EURO6000 electric locomotives, which will be able to run on both standard and broad-gauge lines. When the whole order will be received in 2025, the new locomotives will increase the company’s fleet of multiple-voltage locomotives to 24.
This acquisition has been funded in part by a 15 million EUR grant from the Sustainable and Digital Transport Support Programme of the Spanish Government within the NextGeneration EU Recovery plan for Europe.
The new EURO6000s will be added to the twelve ones that CAPTRAIN España already operates, as the result of an agreement with Stadler Valencia and other suppliers in 2020, and another four that will enter into service in the coming months. Together with the current fleet, these locomotives will lead to further growth in transport in the Mediterranean Corridor, crossing Spain and France and, in the near future, reaching Luxembourg. The new locomotives will also be used in Spain and Portugal.
Following last year’s acquisition of the Portuguese railway company TAKARGO by the CAPTRAIN holding company, this operation will provide CAPTRAIN’s Iberian network with a fleet of at least 62 modern locomotives. CAPTRAIN España and TAKARGO operated a total of 18,136 trains for their customers in 2022, 27 % of which were international, either between Spain and Portugal or between Spain and France. This avoided the emission of nearly 170,000 tonnes of CO2.
CAPTRAIN España currently has regular direct connections with Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg and France and plans to continue developing new traffic, both in the short term and as the extensions and terminals of the Mediterranean Corridor allow. CAPTRAIN España and TAKARGO are leaders in traffic between Spain and Portugal and connect Galicia, Tarragona, Zaragoza, Valencia and the North of Spain with Porto, Lisbon, Setúbal, Coimbra and Figueira da Foz daily, without operational interruptions at the border.