Stadler brings visitors to see Christ the Redeemer

A brand new rack railway, delivered on time and still functioning properly: For Rio de Janeiro, this was a “sort of miracle”, as the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) described it in an article covering the Stadler Rail project. The rail vehicle construction firm, which is headquartered in the St.GallenBodenseeArea, is the world’s only supplier of such rack railways after having “taken over the rack railway segment of the former Swiss Locomotive and Machine Works from Sulzer in 1998”, the NZZ explains. SLM had already built the rack railway for Corcovado in 1979, but by 2005 it required modernization by Stadler Rail, who had by that point assumed operational responsibility.

The negotiations took ten years to finalize, due mainly to the difficult task of financing the project. After being awarded the contract, Stadler began with technical development processes, a “challenging” task, as described by Project Manager Dirk Vogt in the article. A narrow rail track through the rainforest, with listed train stations and an incline of up to 30 percent: for these reasons, Stadler custom-made – almost exclusively in Bussnang – the new trains specifically for the challenges presented by Corcovado. Moreover, Stadler has successfully increased the speed of the trains, so that a greater number of passengers can be transported in the same time frame, and secondly has cut electricity consumption by 75% as braking energy is used to power the descent.

The contract value amounted to 25 million Swiss francs, with the result that the margins “were not astronomical”, as Vogt was quoted in the NZZ. However, for Stadler this was an important prestige project, especially as Chinese engineers are also working on rack railway technology, the NZZ explains.