- Trams Downunder

Re: Alstom scores century with Flexity - Rail Express
bblunt3473

Australia really cracked down on the French back then by putting MACK badges on the Renault buses and trucks that were coming into the country. (Mack owned the Renault commercial business at that time).
Brian, long time fan of badge engineering.

On Tuesday, 5 October 2021, 03:06:13 pm AEDT, Tony Galloway arg@...> wrote:

Not worrying, just sneering. Advertising and PR is just lying to make a living.
As for dealing with the French, heres a couple of names New Zealanders would recognise - Alain Marfat and Dominique Prieur.
These are the two members of the French government terrorist squad who were caught for the terrorist bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour, murdering Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira, July 10 1985.
Despite all the noise from the NZ government at the time about being anti-nuclear weapon, they folded to intimidation over trade by the French - after getting a very lenient 10 year sentence for manslaughter, not murder as deserved, these criminal terrorists were handed back to their terrorist government and released.
The hypocritical silence from all western governments regarding this vicious atrocity was deafening.
If Greenpeace had sunk a French naval vessel they’d be branded a “terrorist organisation”, and anyone found guilty would still be in gaol.
French nuclear bombing of the Pacific continued until 1995. Rates of radiation inflicted cancer in French Polynesia are still treated as a state secret by the French military.
I wouldn’t deal with any French government because they are a nuclear armed terrorist state, and their history of colonial and post colonial atrocities in the Pacific, Indochina, Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean are reasons enough to regard any present so-called terrorism inflicted on metropolitan France by their former colonials as “what goes around, comes around”.
Constantly and repeatedly drawing attention to nuclear testing and the Rainbow Warrior bombing every time the French government whines about revenge attacks for colonialism would really upset Macron if you want to be serious about it.
Never forgive, never forget.
Tony

On 5 Oct 2021, at 2:02 pm, TP historyworks@...> wrote:

Don't worry, they all do this. In its advertising in the past, Bombardier was claiming Comeng's products as its own. What goes around, comes around.

There will be quite a long runout phase for Bombardier models as there are still many orders in progress, some with extensions. It'll be at least a couple of years before we get an indication of where the Alstom product range is going to land.
I was hoping that we might have upset Macron so much that we won't get any more French trams or French operators, but I guess that is too much to wish for. I see that Transdev has been chucked out of Melbourne, replaced by an Australian operator, Kinetic.

Tony P
On Tuesday, October 5, 2021 at 12:19:35 PM UTC+11a...@... wrote:

Classic PR puffery and self congratulation.
How good it is to be able to boast about selling a tram designed and built by a former competitor before it was bought out, while also claiming credit for something that maybe shouldn’t be boasted about, the Citadis X02s.
The pic is of 6001, a Bombardier built car, not 6100, but who notices details?
Note they didn’t mention that other Alstom product with an aversion to going around corners, the ex-Mulhouse cars. Why not - they’re just as “local” as the X02s.
Tony

https://www.railexpress.com.au/101996-2/

Alstom scores century with Flexity
Ray Chan 4 days ago
Alstom has delivered the 100th, and final, Flexity light rail vehicle (LRV) to the Department of Transport in Victoria.

As Australia’s only end-to-end manufacturer of LRVs, Alstom designed the vehicles to meet the specific characteristics of the Melbourne tram network, including increased accessibility.

The trams were locally manufactured at Alstom’s Dandenong rolling stock facility, including more than 50% local content, supporting around 75 employees and a thriving ecosystem of local suppliers in Victoria.

The tram is based on Alstom’s popular low-floor Flexity LRV platform, which is the largest fleet of modern low-floor trams operating on the world’s largest tram network, spanning more than 250km of double track.

The fleet is about one fifth of the network’s overall fleet.

The original contract for the first 50 trams was signed in 2010, with further orders for an additional 20, 10, 10 and 10 vehicles awarded between 2015 and 2019, proving the performance, quality and accessibility credentials of the platform.

Alstom’s LRV fleet in Victoria also includes 41 Citadis X02 LRVs, taking the total number of vehicles operating on the network to 141.

Alstom’s Managing Director, Australia and New Zealand, Mark Coxon, said, the company was thrilled to have delivered the 100 Flexity LRVs to its customer, creating a new milestone for Melbourne’s much-loved tram network.

“In Australian rolling stock terms, this is a truly iconic fleet – the Flexity was made in Melbourne, for Melbourne – and Alstom is proud to be part of this story for Victoria,” he said.

Alstom has been providing sustainable infrastructure solutions across Australia for more than 100 years and currently employs about 1600 people across 25 sites that include engineering centers, manufacturing facilities, project delivery offices and maintenance depots and workshops. Alstom’s installed base of LRVs in Australia exceeds 250 vehicles.