What train other than Alstom Avelia Horizon could Eurostar even consider?

Back in June I wondered why – despite it being heavily rumoured for more than a year – Eurostar still had not signed a deal with Alstom for the purchase of 50 Avelia Horizon double deck high speed trains. These trains are to be called TGV-M in France, while Avelia Horizon is the Alstom brand name. It’s now October, and there is still no order.

In that original post I listed a few reasons why an order had perhaps not been forthcoming – a long order book for that train type, delays getting the first trains approved to run even in France with SNCF, possible headaches with the Channel Tunnel fire regulations, and possible Eurostar management dysfunction and post-COVID financial woes. To that we can perhaps add an extra argument – when Virgin opted for single deck Avelia Stream trains instead, one of its arguments was providing at seat dining is complex in a double deck design (thanks Martin Adam Haynes on Bluesky for pointing me towards this one).

But that – plus some further prompting on social media from rail nerd PGLux – started to make me think differently.

Were Eurostar to not order Avelia Horizon trains from Alstom, what else could they order? This is a very hard question to answer.

I cannot see how Eurostar (or anyone else for that matter) would order trains longer than 200m in length, and run two of them coupled together at peak times. This is especially important in Eurostar’s case as most of its new trains, at least initially, would replace ex-Thalys trains on routes from Amsterdam and Köln via Bruxelles to Paris – and the whole concept on these routes has been based on 200m long units. I have kept that in mind for my assessment.

Option 1 – Alstom Avelia Stream

This is the single deck train type Virgin Trains has committed to ordering from French industrial conglomerate Alstom, but there is a catch. This is an Alstom Italy product, and has been made until now at a production line in Savigliano. What Virgin is to order is an up-rated post-Pendolino (but non-tilting), capable of 300km/h rather than the 250km/h of similar trains built to date for SBB, PKP IC and Italo. Given that Eurostar is 55% owned by SNCF – the French state owned operator – would they give a contract to Alstom without at least some participation of French factories in the train’s manufacture? The uprating to 300km/h is going to mean new bogies and electronics, maybe from Alstom plants in France? And there is a further headache – this is essentially a 1990s train design, evolved. But a top of the range product, at least in terms of build quality, it is not. Upsides include the order book being shorter than for TGV-M, and likelier fewer headaches with the fire regulations.

Option 2 – Alstom AGV

When in the early 2000s Alstom was looking to evolve the TGV design from the 1980s and 1990s, its thinking was in two directions to increase capacity. The idea that won out then was double deck TGVs that retained power cars, but there was an alternative – the single deck AGV creating extra space putting motors below the floor. The problem was the design was no commercial success – only Italo ever ordered any (deliveries started in 2012) and in recent years this train has even disappeared from Alstom’s marketing. It is a French design, it offers TGV quality ride (so better than an Avelia Stream), and has no steps inside – so likely no issue with the evacuation rules. But were Alstom to re-activate it, how much re-working of the design would be needed? And with the former AGV production line in La Rochelle now used for TGV-M, how quickly could Eurostar even get these trains? And would Alstom want to even attempt this?

Option 3 – Alstom Avelia Liberty

What, another Avelia? Yes! The American cousin of the Avelia Horizon – essentially a single deck version of the Horizon / TGV-M. Power cars at each end, and single deck carriages in between, with TGV style Jacob’s bogies for a smooth ride. But the problem here – in a 200m formation – would be that the train’s seating capacity would be too low. Plus the door locations and power cars mean rules for evacuating these would be little easier than for a Avelia Horizon. Were trains of a greater length required – something above 300m – this sort of design could be an option (being something approaching an original Eurostar TMST e300 design), but for 200m it is not going to work.

Option 4 – Siemens Velaro (or Velaro Novo)

Eurostar already has a fleet of 17 Siemens Velaro trains – its e320 trains delivered between 2011 and 2018. But the Eurostar that ordered those trains then was a very different firm to Eurostar now, not least because the UK still owned a 25% stake in the company back then, before selling that stake in 2015 to predominantly Quebec-based investors. That means today SNCF calls the operational shots in Eurostar. The Siemens Velaro – most recently delivered to Deutsche Bahn as ICE3neo – is a very solid product, and the Velaro Novo that Gemini would order is a further evolution of that. But Siemens has no manufacturing works in France, nor any supply chain there, meaning this option would be politically very hard for SNCF to stomach. The order book for these trains is quite short, and Siemens knows how to build trains compatible with the Channel Tunnel.

Option 5 – Hitachi ETR 1000

If contemplating ordering from Siemens is hard, choosing Hitachi would be a bridge further still. This is the train type that has been used by the company – Trenitalia – that has been most forcefully muscling in on SNCF’s routes, first between Italy and France, and now even within France. However solid the ETR 1000 is (and in my experience it is excellent), there is no way a SNCF dominated Eurostar is going to order the product central to its main rival’s offer. The order book to get these trains is only full until 2029 though, and evacuation procedures should be OK too.

Option 6 – Talgo Avril

When these trains were first bought by Renfe there was the idea to one day run them to London. But the series is still not approved to run in France, the existing trains in Spain have been beset with problems, and the customer experience on board is not good. Plus the design with power cars (similar to Avelia Horizon), and 3+2 seating in standard class meaning a narrow aisle, could cause headaches concerning evacuation rules. No way this is a serious option.

Option 7 – CAF Oaris

Spanish manufacturer CAF has two works in France – at Reischshoffen and Bagnères-de-Bigorre – so in this regard is better placed than anyone other than Alstom. But the Oxygène EMUs it is currently building for French Intercités lines have a maximum speed of just 200km/h, and delivery of those trains has been beset by delays. CAF has a higher speed platform – called Oaris – but other than a small order for airport trains for Oslo, no-one else has gone near it. And whether CAF could build a train for the Channel Tunnel is unknown. Going for this would be a very left field choice.

And then there are few others considered and eliminated. Stadler’s Giruno is 250km/h and has an axle load too heavy for French high speed lines. Any post-Bombardier products still in Alstom’s portfolio (such as the SJ250) are not being developed further, and are anyway max speed 250km/h. Anything Chinese or Korean is even more a political no-go than something German or Italian.

Were Eurostar to need an alternative to the Avelia Horizon, and could simply choose from solid, available European train designs, Siemens Velaro, Hitachi ETR 1000 and – just about – Avelia Stream would be viable options. But the problem for Eurostar, dominated as it is by SNCF, is that the choice is not that simple. It is not about the best train, or even an available train, but it is about the politics and manufacturing locations too. If Eurostar for some reason cannot order Avelia Horizon, what it could order instead is damned hard to answer.

The post What train other than Alstom Avelia Horizon could Eurostar even consider? appeared first on Jon Worth.

Source: https://jonworth.eu/what-train-other-than-alstom-avelia-horizon-could-eurostar-even-consider/