The locomotives that will be moving goods wagons on the Betuwe line from 1 January 2007 will be equipped with the new European ETCS safety system.  KEMA Rail Transport Certification (RTC) subjected the first two converted locomotives to a rigorous test program. The two locomotives are officially handed over by the manufacturer Vossloh and the supplier of the safety equipment Alstom on 7 December to the owner, Angel Train lease company.

In the long term, the European ETCS safety system will replace the national safety systems. In the Netherlands that is the ATB system. The Betuwe line and the high-speed line are the first routes on which this new system will be installed. Transmitters are built into the rails that register the position, speed and length of a passing train and send it to the traffic control. If the speed is too high, the locomotive’s onboard computer will slow down or stop the train.

The safety of the transportation system stands or falls with the reliability of this system. For this reason the locomotives must be certified before they are allowed onto the Betuwe line. KEMA-RTC is recognized as an independent certification institute for rail transport. In the past months, KEMA-RTC has extensively tested the first two of eighteen Vossloh locomotives that are equipped with ETCS system. The certification specialists evaluated the design first. Then they investigated whether the built-in system satisfies the legal regulations, stationary and moving in steadily more complex conditions. The two locomotives have passed the demanding tests with flying colors.