First streetcars produced for the city of Dortmund are now successfully accepted. A total of 40 steel structures will find their way to Germany to become a safe means of transportation for residents and tourists. The challenge proved to be not only their size. The new units had to be designed to look identical to their predecessors that have been present on the streets for more than thirty years.
CARS FROM JASIEŃ TO GO TO DORTMUND
The body weighs 4.6 tonnes, the car is 15 metres long and it takes more than 5 000 thousand components to put everything together. Designing and assembling each part requires an extreme precision. No room for even a small error, so it is necessary, at every stage, to control the dimensions and conformity with the design, which in itself has proven to be quite a challenge – says Piotr Sienkiewicz, Sales Director at Felgenhauer.
The solution that Dortmund chose to use is unusual for the industry and challenging at the same time. Older cars are undergoing restoration to then return to the tracks, where they will be joined by brand-new units. It was important to make sure they look identical. As a result passengers will see no difference – but consistency on the streets.
– The task involved creating a streetcar frame. We made sure that the structure featured high strength, because this is how we improve passenger safety. Then streetcars are sent to Leipzig to install modern technology and prepare them for serving passengers – says Piotr Sienkiewicz.
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THE FUTURE OF TRANSPORTATION
More cars are under development in our production facilities and we are more and more confident that these rail vehicles will play a significant role in urban transportation of large cities. This is so because efforts to reduce the impact of human activities on the environment are becoming increasingly clear. As assumed in the European Green Deal, Europe is to become a climate-neutral continent by 2050. Unfortunately, the path to turn this plan into reality is long. The European Environment Agency reports that it is the transport means that are responsible for some 1/4 of the EU’s total CO2 emission in 2019, with as much as 71.7% of it coming from road traffic. In comparison, rail transportation generates only 0.4% of CO2 emission.
The contract which is being executed for a German partner is the next stop on the route we adopted. Many years of observation of investments in the railway sector plus our experience in creating steel structures help us design solutions that are welcomed by the industry with genuinely great enthusiasm. Our future plans are to launch the vehicles we manufacture in more European cities.
