High speed on the rails: The Train, the complementary adversary, and the other competing projects of the SNCF

The Spanish manufacturer Talgo will begin manufacturing the ten Avril trainsets ordered in 2024. The train

Several projects exist in France, but the most advanced is that of a French company, Le Train. An ambition centered on the far west, which breaks with the great distances across France. Other international lines are also being studied.

The map of the fifty daily Train connections resembles the four fingers of a hand facing due west: Rennes, Nantes, La Rochelle and Arcachon, branches taking root in a vertical which will spin away, at great speed. train, from Tours to Bordeaux. At the beginning.

Of the rivals of the SNCF which are not railway giants, Le Train is the most advanced, the most concrete file. Talgo begins, this year, "the manufacture of the ten trainsets ordered" by the company, which is building, in parallel, its operational infrastructure . "We are continuing our industrial and commercial processes", summarizes Alain Gétraud, the general manager, with in his sights "end 2025, beginning 2026."

Also read: High-speed train: "In Spain, competition has not penalized us", defends Renfe

With trains from the manufacturer Talgo

The Avril train, which will also be that of Renfe between Paris and Spain, but whose interior layout will be specific to the Train, will have been approved by then in France and will be able to embark on an original commercial strategy, complementary to the SNCF offer. TGV, at high frequency, on regional and interregional lines, without going to Paris, in a geographical area where there is "leisure and professional demand".

"The West is experiencing a population boom, explains Alain Gétraud, with the development of large metropolises. We need modern, reliable, fast connections. Besides the fact that we come from this great west (Angoulême, Editor's note), we preferred to develop a market that was perhaps less profitable, which remains to be demonstrated, little served , without head-on competition."

Beyond Bordeaux, towards Toulouse

The affair was not simple. This type of entrepreneurial adventure requires money, a lot of it, "between 400 and 500 million euros" including equipment, maintenance infrastructure. Time, but "there are many other sectors, wind power, for example, requiring a huge amount of investment without a euro of turnover for several years"< /em>, observes Alain Gétraud. And a good alignment of the planets. The impossibility of acquiring second-hand equipment delayed the plans of the young railway company, but did not deprive it of its ambitions, in this case in Occitanie and around the Spanish border.