International Railway Journal - August 2007 - (Page 16)

Locomotives Voith goes for Maxima Voith Turbo is following a twopronged strategy to enter the diesel locomotive market, as David Briginshaw reports. It is already producing its first locomotives at its new plant in Kiel, Germany, and plans to start a strategic partnership to produce locomotives in China. V OITH Turbo’s new locomotive division in Kiel has got off to a great start since it was formed just over two years ago, with the first orders already placed for both its Maxima and Gravita diesel-hydraulic locomotive families. As far as Gravita is concerned, Voith has sold four Gravita 10 shunters to a Swiss steel works even though the first Gravita prototypes have yet to be built. Voith Turbo Lokomotivtechnik may be Europe’s, if not the world’s, newest diesel locomotive manufacturer, but it is staffed by a highly skilled and experienced workforce. Its managing director, Mr Hinrich Krey, and many of his colleagues have a wealth of knowledge behind them, having worked in Kiel at the former MaK plant. “We have more than 1000 years of experience between us, and a selection of the best experts in locomotive design and technology,” says Krey. Krey sees a very bright future for diesel-hydraulic locomotives in particular and the locomotive market in general. “In 1999, we expected there would be a demand for 1200 locomotives by 2008, but now our estimate has doubled,” he says. “We also want to demonstrate what is possible with hydrodynamics.” This is a key consideration for Voith, which specialises in this technology, and faced a serious setback in supplying such equipment when Vossloh decided to scale back its high-power dieselhydraulic locomotive activities in Kiel. Voith set up its new locomotive subsidiary in February 2005, and work started on the €7 million 10,000m2 factory beside the Kiel canal in May that year. Krey says this is an excellent location because the water at the quayside is 9m deep, allowing locomotives to be delivered by sea, and the site has a 5km rail link to the German Rail (DB) network which can also be used for test running. The factory was completed in May 2006 and the first of the new Maxima high-power locomotives was ready in time for its debut at InnoTrans in September 2006. The original business model was to develop, design and certify locomotives, but only build them in small numbers because many railways have spare workshop capacity which 16 IRJ August 2007

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of International Railway Journal - August 2007

Contents This month News Market News Transit News News Analysis Voith Goes For Maxima Impact First Gauge-Changeable Loco Under Test Power Surge China Feels the Need For Speed A Firm Foundation For Chinese High-Speed Testing Times on the Betuwe Route Tough Tests For Mass Transit Software A Measure of Success Rendezvous Full Contact List Advertisers Index The Last Word

International Railway Journal - August 2007

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