Peter Smyth, Chief Mechanical Engineer at Iarnród Éireann Irish Rail, said: “Reducing the exhaust emissions of our trains is a key part of our commitment to sustainability and to the strategic ‘Ireland 2040’ project, and with Rolls-Royce we have the right traction partner on board to help us do that.”
Jürgen Blassmann, Head of Rail Business at Rolls-Royce business unit Power Systems, said: “We are delighted to be playing this pioneering role with our strategic partner Iarnród Éireann Irish Rail in shaping the future of environmentally friendly rail transport: The series production MTU traction systems we are now supplying set new standards for cleanliness, reliability and fuel economy. Following conversion to MTU Hybrid PowerPacks, Iarnród Éireann Irish Rail will use these drive systems to make fuel savings of over 30%, depending on the route, also reducing CO2 emissions by the same amount.”
This new order is a new milestone of the close partnership between Rolls-Royce and Iarnród Éireann Irish Rail in recent years: A total of 234 MTU PowerPacks have been powering the Class 22000 trains for many years. In 2018, the partners agreed to refurbish MTU PowerPacks with new transmissions to achieve fuel savings of almost 20%. That same year, Iarnród Éireann Irish Rail announced its intention to trial MTU PowerPacks for the EU Stage V emissions standard. In a second step, these are now to be converted to Hybrid PowerPacks starting next year. Trials of the EU Stage V PowerPacks are scheduled to get underway this August, following which all nine PowerPacks will be converted to Hybrid PowerPacks and commence operation at the end of 2021. Iarnród Éireann Irish Rail will also explore options to convert its fleet to hybrid operation at a later stage once the test runs have been successfully completed.
Press photos are available for download from
https://www.mtu-solutions.com/eu/en/news-and-media/media-center.html