The State-owned Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA), which is in the early stages of a R51-billion fleet overhaul, unveiled the final design of its new X’Ttrapolis MEGA commuter train at the Africa Rail conference in Johannesburg, on Wednesday.

As expected the train’s exterior embraces PRASA’s blue, white and silver corporate colours, representing a marked departure from the yellow-and-grey livery of the existing MetroRail fleet.

The interior, meanwhile, features blue seating, white walls and ceilings, as well as large windows to taken advantage of natural light. The carriage is spacious, uncluttered and incorporates modern communication and safety features.

A total of 600 trains are to be supplied by the Alstom-led Gibela Consortium and are scheduled to be deployed on the domestic network over the coming ten years.

Alstom’s design and styling director Xavier Allard, who attended the launch, told Engineering News Online that the group’s designers had paid particular attention to the interior features, focusing on the needs of the “client’s client – the passenger”.

Alstom 20-employee-strong design and styling department finalised the designed through a collaborative ‘design review’ with PRASA’s designers, which opened the way for the manufacturing phase.

Besides emphasising comfort and robustness, Allard said attention was also given to coach lighting, communication and to ensuring that vital information was both visible and easy to interpret.

But Allard said efforts were also made to reflect the character and culture of the country, as well as the identity of the operator. “In the case of PRASA, the design of the train is inspired by South Africa’s rapid advancement towards increased modernity and technological progress.”

For his part, PRASA CEO Lucky Montana stressed the safety features, including the fact that the automatic doors could not be opened while the train was in motion.

He said this, together with the seamless flow between carriages, would put paid to the current safety hazard of passengers hanging out of doors, or standing between coach gaps.

The trains would travel at maximum speeds of between 120 km/h and 160 km/h and passengers would also be notified of approaching stations ahead of time.

The first 180 trains would be built in Lapa, Brazil, and the first unit is scheduled to enter service during the fourth quarter of 2015.

However, Montana stressed that the project had been designed to help revive South Africa’s rail-engineering sector and that plans were well advanced for the creation of an assembly facility and an associated rail-engineering industrial park.

A 600 000 m2 site had been identified in Dunnottar, in the Ekurhuleni metropolitan area of Gauteng. The facility would be responsible for the local assembly of 580 trains.

It is anticipated that Gibela will invest R1-billion in the establishment of the rail hub, which will also seek to attract rail-component manufactures.

PRASA has stipulated a 65% local-content threshold and Montana said skills-development and technology-transfer commitments had also been extracted, including a commitment to train 19 000 people over the life of the project.

Speaking at the unveiling, Transport Minister Dipuo Peters said government not only viewed the fleet renewal as central to its ambitious public-transport expansion plans, but also as a way of reviving the rail engineering industry.

“This process is much more than a train purchase. We are reviving our rail-engineering sector and contributing to skills development and job creation,” she said, reporting that the acquisition would support the creation of 33 000 direct and indirect jobs.