Today, the four-car unit ComfortJet is heading from Velimi to Austria for further testing

Martin Dufek, photo: Czech Railways

Today, a four-car unit of the new ComfortJet trains left the test circuit near Velimi for further testing in Austria.

On Austrian tracks, driving tests with a speed exceeding 200 km/h will now take place with a shortened unit. The first restaurant car is currently located in the Rail Tec Arsenal – the climate chamber in Vienna – and specialists from the Czech design center Siemens Mobility are testing and checking the car’s parameters here.

ComfortJet units will offer passengers a total of 555 seats, of which 99 seats are in 1st class. Another 18 places are located in the restaurant section. The train will offer an on-board Wi-Fi network, 230 V sockets and USB connectors for powering travel electronics, electric wheelchairs and electric bicycles. The set is adapted for the travel of people in wheelchairs and has a restaurant section, a children’s cinema, places to store prams, bicycles and other large luggage and offers a whole range of other advantages that modern train sets provide, for example, it is free walk-through interior of the entire train

A total of 20 nine-car sets ComfortJet will consist of 180 cars. These are the result of the association of Siemens Mobility and Škoda Group. The housings of the embedded cars are manufactured at the Siemens plant in Vienna, the control cars in Munich. Subsequently, the cars are moved to the Škoda Group plant in Ostrava, where they are finished.

Czech Railways wants to deploy the trainsets with a maximum operating speed of 230 km/h on routes to Germany, Austria or Hungary. The total value of the contract is over 12 billion crowns.