At a press conference of a Euro9000 locomotive presentation at Innotrans last year, Willem Goosen, the CEO of ELP, foreshadowed the intention to get the locomotive approved for the Balkan region. Half a year later, this becomes a reality.
The company has announced that, along with Stadler Valencia and local third-party partners, it will run homologation tests to get approval for operations in Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia. The expected deadline for the approval is by the end of 2023.
For this purpose, ELP has released a special visualisation of the EuroDual locomotive in white and blue, the “Flying Balkan”. It has a map and flags of the Balkan countries, with cities such as Koper, Ljubljana, Rijeka, Zagreb, Novi Sad, Belgrade, Niš, Podgorica and Bar highlighted. The motto “beyond borders” is added too. As ELP states, railways in South-eastern Europe are ideal for EuroDual due to their challenging terrains and a combination of electrified and non-electrified lines. The locomotive can fully utilise the 7MW power under the local 25 kV AC catenary lines and 2.8 MW power in diesel mode. All that combines with six axles and a starting traction of 500 kN.
EuroDual is popular among German customers, where ELP leased most of its locomotives (74 were ordered in total), while Norway is the second biggest market, with two more customers there. Four new countries should be added to the existing countries of approved operation – Germany and Austria. EuroDual locomotives are also approved to run to selected border stations with Slovakia, Hungary and Czechia.
