The company is eager to borrow Western technologies, and is weighing chances to pool efforts with overseas-based companies on joint ventures. In particular, said Mr. Yakunin, the Russian Rail has made a contract with the German major Siemens to set up a joint venture that will manufacture speed electric trains.
The Russian Rail also looks forward to acquiring Western technologies to put out aluminum cars and multi-system locomotives. Thus, Russia is manufacturing dual-system locomotives in whose R&D the Canadian-based Bombardier Co. was active, he pointed out.
Russian Rail bosses met in conference with Bombardier spokesmen, yesterday, and offered it capital investment opportunities in a Russian Rail branch to manufacture railroad automatics and telemechanical gadgetry.
The company may make a loan to implement its Siemens-partnered projects, Gennadi Fadeyev, Russian Rail President, said toward February's end.
He and Hans Schabert, Siemens AG transport technological group president, met at the negotiation table in Schleswig, Germany, December 21, to sign a preliminary contract for R&D on, and manufacture of a new-generation speed train to be used on the Moscow-St. Petersburg road and elsewhere.
The contract envisages a joint venture to be established on the basis of the Moscow Locomotive Repair Works. It will put out speed trains in Russia on to Siemens technologies. The contract envisages sixty trains made to a lump 1.7 billion Euro. A first train will be ready, 2007, another eight a year later, with an annual twelve for the following years. The project also concerns infrastructure updating for the Moscow-St. Petersburg road, which will allow trains to make 250 to 300 kilometers an hour.
Dietrich Moeller, in charge of the Siemens AG electric train branch, met with Russian Rail bosses for negotiations in Moscow, January 19. As Herr Moeller said, the Siemens intends to finish drafting a contract by March's end, to supply sixty speed rains to the Russian Rail. "We mean the job to get to such a stage by the end of March, that will allow a contract made. Be all that as it may, we expect the contract to involve more than a billion Euro."
