NS confirmed Fyra train purchases ‘one week’ before service halt: NOS

A week before halting the Fyra high speed train service to Belgium because of technical problems, Dutch rail company NS actually confirmed the purchase order, Nos television reports on Thursday.

The broadcaster has obtained a letter dated January 11 in which the NS tells Italian maker AnsaldoBreda it agrees to ‘proceed with PTO of units 9 and 16 and to the delivery of all remaining units’.

‘Remaining issues known to both parties’ will be solved in the normal course of the project, the letter states.

Reaction

The letter is a reaction to a letter from AnsaldoBreda in which it states nothing stands in the way of the orders going through and that ‘system faults’ can be discussed at a meeting later in the month, without any guarantees, Nos says.

NS had ordered 19 V250 Fyra trains which were originally slated for delivery in 2007.

However, on January 17 the service was stopped after part of a train fell off in Belgium after a heavy snowfall. This was the culmination of weeks of problems, during which more than half of Fyra train services between Amsterdam and Brussels were either late or cancelled.

In late May, the Belgian railway firm NMBS said it was definitely pulling out of the Fyra project and cancelling its train orders. A few days later the NS made the same decision.

The NS and AnsaldoBreda are currently embroiled in a string of legal battles over the cancelled order.

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