More Talgo Rakes For Egypt

On 9 August 2022, ENR (Egyptian National Railways), through ERA (Egyptian Railway Authority), awarded Talgo a contract worth approximately 280 million EUR for the supply of seven 18-car night trains and their maintenance for 15 years. 

The contract will come into force once the financing conditions are met, which is expected to happen in the coming months. The trainsets from the manufacturer’s Intercity platform, with which Talgo previously won contracts from DB and DSB, will comprise ten 2nd class cars, five 1st class cars, two dining cars and a generator car. They will be built at the Álava (Rivabellosa) and Madrid (Las Matas) works, for delivery from 2024.

The contract comes shortly after the first 15-car day-time Talgo rake of the first contract started test operation without passengers on the Cairo - Alexandria and Cairo - Aswan routes in May 2022. The contract was awarded in April 2019 and covered six trains, but seven will be delivered - in fact, one extra train will be provided free of charge by Talgo as a "gift to the Egyptian people". The contract is worth 157 million EUR and also includes maintenance of the trains for seven years.

The Talgo rakes have a maximum speed of 160 km/h and consist of eight 2nd class cars, five 1st class cars, a buffet car and a generator car. Deliveries were originally scheduled to begin in 2021, but the first train was not disembarked at the port of Alexandria until 28 March 2022. Less than a month later, the first new locomotive from the USA arrived there. Test passenger service began in July, and ENR is using the Talgos on daily services on trunk lines that run virtually parallel to the Nile and connect the Mediterranean port of Alexandria with Cairo and the southern city of Aswan.

We asked Talgo:
1) what other Talgo depots than in Cairo are envisaged?
2) how deliveries of remaining six day-time rakes continue?
3) when do you expect that the approval for regular passenger service of Talgo for ENR (not the test service) will be awarded?
4) what authority in Egypt awards the certification for rail vehicles?
5) how the idea was born to make the seventh rake as a „gift t the Egyptian people“?
Talgo answered us only: "Unfortunately, due to confidentiality reasons, your questions cannot be answered."

Locomotives For Talgos

The Talgo rakes are hauled by "Class 77" EMD (Electro-Motive Diesel, part of the Progress Rail Locomotives group, PRL) locomotives. These are being manufactured at the Muncie, Indiana works under a contract dated 16 November 2019, when ERA signed several contracts worth a total of 466.1 million USD following a meeting between President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and EMD.

Under them, the US company was to deliver 50 new locomotives within 22 months, refurbish 41 existing ENR locomotives by June 2020 and upgrade 50 others within 30 months of the contract. EMD is also to provide service and spare parts for these 141 locomotives for 15 years. The value of the contracts is secured through soft loans, with the exception of a 27 million USD loan to the company, which are paid from ERA's treasury.

We asked EMD:
- how many of the new Talgo locomotives were delivered to ENR until now?
- how many of the refurbished Henschel locomotives were delivered to ENR until now? Where the refurbishing is made?
- what ENR class of the 41 locos is in question? How many of them were delivered to ENR until now? Where the refurbishing is made?
- do you have photos of the production and modernising of the locomotives in question?

EMD answered us: "At this time, we are unable to provide a comment or answers to your questions. Thank you for reaching out!"

According to the contract, all new Class 77 locomotives were already due to be delivered by September 2021, which apparently has not happened if 4001 arrived in Egypt in April 2022, and similarly at least repairs to the JT42CWRM machines will be delayed, with the first ones completed in June this year instead of June 2020.