Cornerstone laid for service depot for the Rhine-Ruhr-Express

Work has begun on the depot for the Rhine-Ruhr-Express (RRX) trains in Dortmund-Eving, Germany for test operations to begin in mid-2018.

The site of the new depot, which VRR currently owns until 2050 through a leasehold agreement with Siemens, covers around 70,000 square meters and includes a six-track maintenance building, a warehouse, administration and social building, an outdoor cleaning facility for the trains, an underfloor lathe for overhauling wheelsets, and a diagnostics system for wheelsets. Around 5.5km of track will also be laid on the property.

Furthermore, the facility will use around 15 percent less energy than the recommended standard set by the European Energy Saving Ordinance (EnEV).

The ‘digitalised depot’

The depot will be fully oriented to the unique digitalised train service and maintenance, and it will be able to offer predictive analyses to identify faults long before failures actually occur.  

To achieve this, the trains are monitored in real-time and the delivered data is analysed in a central diagnostics system at the Siemens Mobility Data Services Center (MDS) in Munich-Allach, Germany. On the basis of these analyses, specialists at the MDS calculate failure predictions and recommend acute or scheduled maintenance to the service team in the new depot.

“In Dortmund-Eving, we’ll be taking the service and maintenance of trains into the digital age,” Jochen Eickholt, CEO of Siemens Mobility Division said. “We use algorithms to analyse data delivered from the trains so we can fix malfunctions before they actually occur.”

All 82 RRX trains will be serviced and maintained at the depot for 32 years and Siemens will create 75 jobs at the facility.