Bombardier Transportation officially presented its new Bombardier TRAXX DC3 locomotive at their Vado Ligure site in Italy. The manufacturer calls it the most innovative locomotives to enter the rail freight transportation market. A unique feature is the last-mile function.

Peter Amman, Head of Global Ecosystem Freight at Bombardier Transportation commented, “We are happy to present this innovative locomotive to the Italian and global freight market. Its flexibility and our strong maintenance offering will not only reduce total cost of ownership, but also enable Italian freight operators to expand their business.”

“The new TRAXX DC3 represents a generational leap in the market, a state-of-the-art locomotive, able to maximize energy efficiency, ensuring greater load, traction capacity and lower energy consumption. One of the locomotive’s most interesting features is its Last Mile function that offers new logistical concepts by enabling the locomotive to easily bridge non-electrified track sections often found in ports or freight terminals. This optional feature can even be installed as a post-delivery upgrade”, said Luigi Corradi, CEO and Managing Director of Bombardier Transportation Italy.

For greater efficiency and lower operation costs, the TRAXX DC3 has also been designed around the freight industry’s latest digital maintenance solutions. Intelligent platforms based on Conditional Based Maintenance, Big Data and IoT technology correlate data coming from the vehicle and the rail infrastructure to monitor the vehicle’s health in real-time, predicting maintenance interventions, while guaranteeing maximum fleet performance and availability.

On the rails

Italian rail operators Mercitalia Rail, Captrain Italy and GTS are the first to have enhanced their freight service by purchasing the new TRAXX DC3. In addition to the 190 BOMBARDIER TRAXX DC locomotives delivered, there are currently fifty locomotives in the pipeline at Bombardier’s Vado Ligure production site.