Bombardier drives innovation with a new bogie technical center

Rail technology leader Bombardier Transportation is setting up a Bogie Technical Center at its site in Siegen. This investment of approximately 10 million euro confirms Bombardier’s leading position in providing bogie1 technology and its commitment to deliver the best solutions for its global base of customers. Bombardier’s Bogie Technical Center is due to open at the end of 2014 and will work in close cooperation with the academic world and other Bombardier manufacturing sites, but also with customers, suppliers and certification institutes. The new facility will combine a test and validation centre with a business unit hub, including international bogie engineering specialists and associated functions.

Overall, the consolidated Siegen site will form a unique production and innovation hub. It will comprise Bombardier Transportation’s bogies headquarters, the Bogie Technical Center, the existing bogie final assembly area, Wheelset Center and bogie crash repair and overhaul center. The site will bring together Bombardier’s engineering experts with the necessary tools and means to continue to develop the BOMBARDIER FLEXX bogie portfolio to better fulfill customer requirements, in particular in terms of strict certification and homologation processes.

Bart Vantorre, President of the Bombardier Transportation Bogies Business Unit said: “Our Bogie Technical Center will create the perfect environment for innovation, allowing Bombardier to test innovative ideas and attract the employees of tomorrow. It will enable us to continue to shape the future of bogie technologies by expanding and further improving our FLEXX bogies portfolio. We are dedicated to our customers and the Bogie Technical Center will give us the means to meet our customers’ needs now and in the future.”

Bombardier plans to exhibit its FLEXX Speed bogie for the groundbreaking BOMBARDIER ZEFIRO very high speed train at the InnoTrans 2012 trade fair this September in Berlin, Germany.

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1. An undercarriage with four or six wheels pivoted beneath a railway vehicle