Belarusian Railway to purchase 20 short 4-car electric trains. Here's what's known about it
An interesting tender appeared on the IceTrade public procurement website. Belarusian Railway (more precisely, its Minsk branch) is purchasing 20 electric trains at once. This tender is particularly interesting in light of the fact that recently, Belarusian Railway recalled Swiss Stadler electric trains and Polish PESA diesel trains for urgent unscheduled repairs, which, as officially stated , "are not ready to operate in these weather conditions" and "did not pass the durability test," writes Blizko.by.
Illustrative photo. Photo: Office Life
The tender application does not contain detailed technical characteristics of the trains, but there are some interesting details.
Firstly, exactly 4-car electric trains will be purchased. Until now, only Stadler electric trains from the very first delivery operate according to this scheme in Belarus: in 2010, 6 trains for the so-called "city lines" and 4 trains for regional lines were purchased. All other electric trains are significantly longer: 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 cars.
Secondly, the car layout is known:
- 12 trains with a "3+2" seat layout with face-to-face seating;
- 18 trains with a "3+2" seat layout in the head cars, and a "3+3" layout in the trailer cars, both with face-to-face seating.
This suggests that the trains will be deployed on different routes (nominally short and nominally long, or, in Belarusian Railway terminology, on city, regional, and interregional lines).
Thirdly, the purchase price is known. A total of 908 million rubles is planned to be paid for all 30 trains. Or 30,266,667 rubles per train (10,207,000 US dollars at the current exchange rate of the National Bank of Belarus). Is this a lot or a little? For comparison: in 2010, Belarusian Railway bought 10 first Stadler electric trains, 4 cars each — a total of 60 million euros was spent, meaning each electric train cost 6 million euros, or approximately 7.8 million US dollars at that year's exchange rate.
Finally, the delivery times. The entire purchase is planned to be completed from June 1, 2026, to December 31, 2030, i.e., over 4.5 years. The interval between deliveries of each train is not specified. However, the fact that the closest date will arrive in just two months suggests that new electric trains will be seen on routes very soon.