The company "Sinara – Transport Machines" (STM) has started creating a new universal railcar designed for operation on high-speed railways (HSR). The development is being carried out jointly by two engineering centers of the holding — the design bureau "Kalugaputmash" and the STM Research Center.
The planned design speed of the new four-axle railcar will be 140 km/h — the same indicator was demonstrated by the AM-140 model certified in 2019, which was supplied to Russian Railways in series. At the same time, the component base will be revised in the new version with an emphasis on increasing the level of sovereignty. The equipment layout will also change, and the operator's cab will become modular — similar to the one installed on the PMA-3 track-tamping-straightening machine.
A special feature of the promising railcar will be its multifunctionality: due to a wide range of interchangeable modules, it will be able to perform dozens of tasks — from welding to servicing the contact network. According to developers, one such machine is capable of replacing three specialized track units at once. Vitaly Votolevsky, Executive Director of STM, noted that the technical characteristics of the new railcar make it promising for use in the maintenance of high-speed railway lines.
As a reminder, according to RPM Group estimates for 2020, the fleet of railcars in Russian Railways numbered about 600 units with a depreciation of about 40%. In subsequent years, no major purchases or contracts for the supply of such equipment were carried out, which creates prerequisites for updating the fleet in the near future.
