Background and History
NS Hispeed and NMBS/SNCB ordered 19 trainsets in 2004 for operations between Amsterdam and Brussels and Breda on the HSL-Zuid and HSL 4 high speed railway lines.
Initially delivery was foreseen for 2007.
In 2008 expectations were for deliveries by 2009 and an introduction into service by the middle of 2009.
The first trainsets had been manufactured by March 2009, and initial tests on the Velim test circuit in the Czech Republic took place in early 2009, In April 2009 the first unit arrived in Arnhem in the Netherlands, and was towed to Amsterdam for tests.
The High Speed Alliance (HSA) had claimed that the delay of introduction of any trains was due to the lack of a formal ETCS level 2 specification; by March HSA was close to financial ruin due to lack of any income, and a re-organisation of track access charges for the unused HSL-Zuid line had to be arranged with the Dutch government.
The service, branded Fyra, was introduced along with the formal presentation of the prototype V250 train at the high speed train depot at Watergraafsmeer in the Netherlands on 7 July 2009. The unfurnished prototype underwent testing on both high speed lines, with the ordered trains' expected in-service date of Autumn 2010; introduction of any service on the HSL-Zuid had been delayed due to problems with the introduction of the ETCS signalling system; the line had been built without any legacy safety system. Services on the line began in September 2009 with conventional locomotive haulage, but the introduction of level 2 ETCS on the whole line was not in place, and expected by June 2010.
In 2010 the Dutch transport minister Camiel Eurlings stated that any introduction of a commercial V250 service on Dutch high speed lines would not take place until December 2011. Driver training on high-speed lines in the Netherlands began in March 2012, with commercial use of the V250 planned for September, 2012.
A limited service of one return train per 3 hours in the Netherlands began in September 2012 between Amsterdam and Rotterdam.
The trains were provisionally certified for use in Belgium in September 2012.
Regular Fyra service between Amsterdam and Brussels with V250 trains began on 9 December 2012.
Since their introduction the V250 trains have experienced numerous technical problems. All V250 were suspended from commercial service on the 16th of January 2013, after only one month of service, due to reliability and safety concerns in snowy weather. Two days later the certification for the V250 in Belgium was revoked after a floor plate, that had fallen off a V250, was found along the tracks.
The continuous problems with the V250 train have caused public outcry in both Belgium and the Netherlands, including accusations in the Belgian and Dutch media that only financial considerations were behind the decision to grant the contract to AnsaldoBreda. Initially the maximum speed requirements were fixed at 220 km/h, which would have reduced the purchase cost per seat drastically. However, after comparing offers by Alstom (manufacturers of the French TGV) and Siemens (who manufacture the German ICE trains) with that of AnsaldoBreda, it transpired that the Italian producer was able to offer a cheaper train with a higher speed of 250 km/h, which ultimately gave the Italian company the edge.
On May 31st 2013, the Belgian railroad company NMBS decided to stop the Fyra project, due to the many technical issues, and because of safety concerns. No trains had been delivered and the company will refuse delivery of the trains it had ordered. On grounds that the manufacturer was unable to resolve any of the numerous issues in the contractually foreseen 3 months.
On June 3th 2013, the Dutch national rail road company NS announced that it had made a similar evaluation, and expressed its desire to stop with the V250 project. The Dutch department of finance agreed, and recommended that NS do "everything in its power" to get a refund from AnsaldoBreda.
Read more about this topic: V250 (train)
Famous quotes containing the words background and, background and/or history:
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)