Alpha Trains, the European continent’s largest leasing company for rail rolling stock, has ordered seven Desiro Mainline (ML) regional trains from Siemens Mobility. Ostdeutsche Eisenbahn GmbH (ODEG) will lease the trains for service in the rail network Baltic coast east operated from December 2019 onwards by the ODEG on behalf of Verkehrsgesellschaft Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (VMV). The production has already started at the Siemens Mobility train manufacturing facility in Krefeld. “Alpha Trains ordered the Desiro ML as its first customer many years ago and we are pleased that this proven and reliable platform is also used for this project” said Thomas Schmidt, Managing Director of Alpha Trains Europa GmbH.

The trains will initially be delivered in three parts and will be used on the Rostock-Sassnitz, Stralsund-Binz and Rostock-Züssow lines. Capacity will be expanded to the four-part vehicle shortly after delivery. "The Desiro ML impressed us with its dynamic driving capabilities, excellent driving comfort and with the powerful impellent thanks to its four bogies. Our drivers also confirm that we have solid technology and a very well thought-through operating concept in the driver's cab” says Arnulf Schuchmann, Managing Director and spokesman for ODEG. “We are providing a train for our customer in record time. This speed is made possible by the high flexibility of our Desiro ML platform, which allows the easy addition or removal of an intermediate car depending on the required transport capacity. This creates sustainable value-added over the train’s entire lifecycle,” said Sabrina Soussan, CEO of Siemens Mobility.   Expansion of the train’s capacity is facilitated by the flexible single-car concept of the Desiro platform, which allows simply adding an extra intermediate car to the trainset. By optimally utilizing the train’s entire length for seats, operators benefit from a higher transport capacity. Over 90 percent of the Desiro ML’s length is available for passengers.   Railway operator ODEG provides regional passenger services on behalf of the federal states of Berlin, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. ODEG is the largest privately operated railway system in eastern Germany, with a total of eleven lines and 1,200 kilometers of routes. The company transports around 18.2 million passengers a year, covering a total distance of roughly eleven million kilometers.