Talgo to supply 7 luxurious sleeper trains to Egypt

CAIRO – 9 August 2022: Egypt and Spain's Talgo signed on Tuesday a contract for the latter to supply seven luxurious sleeper trains, which will be a total of 126 railcars, and provide maintenance and spare parts for 15 years.

Every train will consist of 10 second-class passenger railcars, five first-class passenger railcars, two dining cars, and a power car. The contract also provides that Talgo and Egypt's Semaf Locomotives join forces on localizing sleeper train production.

The Ministry of Transport and the National Egyptian Railway Industries Company (NERIC) signed a cooperation protocol with the Spanish company “Talgo” to study the establishment of a factory to manufacture railway passenger cars locally.

The protocol includes the manufacture of 500 assorted railway passenger cars (100 air-conditioned first-class cars - 200 air-conditioned second-class cars - 200 advanced third-class cars) using Talgo global technology as a first stage out of a total of 1,000 railway cars planned to be manufactured locally.

This signing is the second protocol in the field of localizing the mobile unit industry in Egypt, after the contract to localize 320 subway vehicles with 40 trains, which was previously signed with the Hyundai Rotem and Nerk companies union to localize the metro train industry, with the aim of meeting the expected increase in the number of passengers in the coming years.

The Minister of Transport, Kamel Al-Wazir, said that cooperation with major international companies specialized in the localization of the mobile unit industry makes Egypt the first country to manufacture mobile units in the Middle East and Africa.

It also represents the first step in realizing the dream of Egypt being one of the major industrial countries in this field and providing all the needs of the huge national projects implemented by the state in the field of subway projects and electrical traction means to provide hard currency, which the government has been using to import these trains.