Il FS group brings its technology to the Dubai Expo. On the occasion of the international event New technologies for safe and sustainable infrastructures, Rete Ferroviaria Italiana and Italferr (companies of the FS Group) during two panels organized to discuss the upcoming challenges of railway mobility and the development of sustainable, resilient, interconnected and accessible in line with the European funds of the Pnrr.
At the center of the two meetings the new high-speed diagnostic train 2.0 Diamond, and the 'ERTMS Urban, the innovative technological system aimed at improving the circulation of trains and increasing their frequency in the metropolitan hubs.
“Today, also thanks to the resources of the Pnrr, we are building the infrastructures of tomorrow, which will unite Italy even more and guarantee the country's new mobility. At Expo 2020, however, we are not presenting what will be the infrastructures of the future but we are talking about the future of existing infrastructures", he underlined Vera Fiorani, managing director of Rfi.
"Tomorrow's infrastructures will have to be digital, resilient, resistant to climate change, sustainable right from the design phase", he added Andrea Nardinocchi, managing director of Italferr.
FS Group technology at Expo 2020: the Diamante 2.0 train
It is Rfi's new train “capable of simultaneously monitoring over 500 parameters and verifying in real time the state of health of the infrastructure at 300 kilometers per hour, already circulating on Italian tracks these days”, said Fiorani.
At the Dubai event, the new train was presented for the first time in virtual mode: thanks to the use of augmented reality it will be possible to get on board and discover all its characteristics from the ordinary and extraordinary maintenance of the railway infrastructure to the predictive diagnostic activity that allows you to intervene in advance, before a breakdown or a anomaly.
Diamante 2.0 is a convoy Frecciarossa composed of 8 carriages and two locomotives where real laboratories are installed instead of seats for travellers. 98 cameras are installed on board and over 200 sensors placed on the roof, under the body and on the bogies near the wheels to monitor data and values aimed at analyzing the conditions of the railway infrastructure such as, for example, geometry and wear of the track, the interaction between the wheel and the rail, the quality of energy collection from the overhead power line, signalling, telecommunications.
The new train is part of a renewal plan for the current fleet, which provides for the gradual decommissioning of vehicles that have reached the end of their useful life and the consequent commissioning of new and innovative diagnostic vehicles, in line with policies and objectives of mission 3 of the Pnrr, aimed at increasing safety, capacity and capillarity of the railway system, and quality of the service offered. The amount invested was 22,7 million in the technology sector and 16,2 million in rolling stock, for a total of 38,9 million.
The ERTMS Urban technological system
During the event in the Emirates, the ERTMS Level 2 Urban version developed by Rete Ferroviaria Italiana also made its debut, a system that will allow "doubling the number of trains in circulation in urban hubs", underlined the CEO Fiorani.
In detail, this technology, implemented both on the ground and on board, increases the capacity of the existing railway infrastructure, for greater regularity and frequency in the railway circulation of the nodes, avoiding interventions with an impact from an economic and urban point of view, with benefits for the all the Local Public Transport.
The first urban hubs to be equipped will be Florence, Rome and Milan with the simultaneous upgrading of rolling stock. In the future, its functional principles may also be applied to the new "stand-alone" ERTMS context for which the first Framework Agreements have been stipulated in compliance with the provisions of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (funding of 2,97 billion euro for the installation of ERTMS/ETCS on 3.400 km of network by 2026).
