The Diplomat
The CAF Group has signed a contract with the state-owned railway operator SAR (Saudi Arabia Railways) which covers the maintenance of the Saudi Arabian operator’s train fleet, as well as technical support and other related services. The contract is worth nearly 200 million euros.
As the Beasain-based company explained, on the one hand, the agreement contemplates the joint performance with the Saudi operator of the maintenance work on the trains supplied in recent years by CAF in the country, for a period of five years, reports Europa Press.
These are the units that currently operate on the North-South line, which connects the capital Riyadh with the city of Qurayat on the border with Jordan, as well as those that operate on the East-West line, which in turn connects Riyadh with Dammam, a railway network of more than 1,700 kilometres in length, which in addition to the aforementioned cities, connects other important areas of the country such as Hail, Al-Qassim and Al-Hofuf.
In addition, it has been agreed to create the Engineering Centre of Excellence, which will have the objective of training the SAR staff so that they have the operational capabilities to carry out maintenance work on the units.
Finally, the contract also includes the implementation of SAR’s Digital hub centre, as a reference centre in the Gulf region in the field of train digitalisation, whose objective will be the development of digital systems and tools for the trains of the aforementioned fleets, an area in which CAF and SAR have already been working for several years.
