MONTREAL – Bombardier will supply three extra train sets at additional no charge for a Swiss Federal Railways order inked in 2010. Officials expect to complete the order in mid-2021 after delivering the first vehicles in 2018.
In the past year, Bombardier has resolved technical issues with the trains that limited their reliability, the Montreal Gazette reports. The railroad has 23 of the trains in service.
The order originally specified 59 double deck, electric multiple unit trains at a price of C$1.91 billion. The latest change to the agreement will raise production to 62 trains.
The railroad magazines here in the UK and Europe regularly contain articles about delivery and reliability problems with new trains to various customers, sometimes leading to acrimonious court cases. What is it these days!!?? Manufacturers used to build stuff that just worked – these days it sometimes feels like they experiment on their customers. A lot of the issues seem to be software linked – as on a journey a few years ago on the DB ICE trains from Cologne to Brussels that was constantly tripping out with an on board Siemens (?) engineer rushing around with a laptop resetting the system (about 15 mins a time – very late into Brussels). More recently the power failure in London when a whole fleet of new electric trains tripped and couldn’t be restarted by their drivers – engineers ferried around in blue flashing police cars to reboot and get them moving again.
All too smart by half, I think!