The SNCF and the manufacturer presented, on Monday April 29, the final version of the train, which is already “coming out” in series from Belfort.
Under the glass roofs of the immense 6,700 m2 hall, the gantry moves the 50 t machine like a straw. “The second engine of train No. 7”, points out David Journet, the director of the Alstom Belfort factory. At this stage, “it is 90% complete. The main things remaining are the electrical tests to be carried out, the last fairings to be installed and the installation on bogies”the wheels of the machine, so to speak.
A few minutes earlier, the French industrialist and SNCF, its client, opened the door of hangar 235 on the final version of the TGV M, slowly leaving the building where the TGV trains are parked, awaiting delivery. But here, in the Belfort factory, built between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the workers do not call it TGV M and nor Avelia Horizon, its name in the manufacturer’s range. It’s the “TGV twenty-twenty, for 2020”. And they did not wait for the end of the certification tests to build it on an assembly line, the SNCF alone is expecting 115 examples from 2025.
80 days, two per month
Towards Belfort, everything converges from the eight industrial sites which supply the elements of the new train. The cars, manufactured in La Rochelle, engines, bogies, traction chain, electrical systems, electronics, steel, battery, etc., of which we will make the engines, before final assembly and testing of the trains.
Here, we create machines with a power of 8,000 kW (more than 11,000 HP), capable of towing ten cars at 350 km/h, at the rate of one unit every two weeks. From the first sheet to leaving the site, the “crossing time is 80 working days”, indicates Jean-Baptiste Eymeoud, director of Alstom France. This is necessary.
Each one, with a final weight of 68 t, is an assembly of 40,000 parts, some 4,000 different references. Starting from the steel profiles of the boilerwork, on the first station where the chassis is born, to arrive at the dashboard controls, installed at the last station which precedes the exit from the three parallel halls of the assembly line. Cathedrals so large that the TGV M are not alone there: here a freight locomotive with open entrails; there, two duplex TGV trains, which, renovated, “are going to leave for thirty years”, smiles David Journet. An operation which falls within the framework of “our programmed deobsolescence program for 104 trainsets”, indicates Alain Krakovitch, director of TGV-Intercités, at SNCF. For four months, therefore, one engine behind the other, moved by the giant bridges, it is a caterpillar which moves forward.
40,000 pieces to assemble
First, the cauldron: the sheet metal walls are grafted onto the frame, then the “rear bulkhead and cabin, describes Martial Marhem, one of the boilermaking executives. Checks are carried out to the tenth of a millimeter with laser trackers.precision to be compared to the tens of meters of length of a power car.
The carcass then weighs 10 t, it has already required 1,300 hours, 4,700 welds (2 km). We add 1,500 hours for the painting, which will be spread over fourteen days, and the engine can go to assembly, on six successive stations, the wiring of which will be a piece of bravery. From pantograph to bogies, via transformers, motors, subsystems, etc. the electricians will have 12,000 m of cables to pull… 230 times for the SNCF order alone, at the rate of two power cars per train.
In 2025, the first five trainsets will be delivered to the railway company. Then nine in 2026 and twelve at cruising speed, per year. But SNCF has already announced that there will be others.
