Swiss rolling stock manufacturer Stadler Rail has won a tender to deliver 80 Tramlink light rail vehicles. The trams will be supplied for Azienda Trasporti Milanesi (ATM), a public transport company in Milan, in a six-year period.

The initial order includes 30 trams while other 50 units are the optional ones. The batch from the initial order will be supplied in two years after concluding the agreement. ATM intends to operate 50 trams on the urban routes and 30 units on two interurban lines from Milan to Desio and Limbiate. The overall order is estimated at 213 million Euros.

Stadler Rail will supply the Tramlink vehicles in a three-section formation with a length of 25 metres and with a low-floor section in the middle. They will be produced by Stadler Rail Valencia, the company’s subsidiary in Spain. These units will be bidirectional, unlike the vast majority of the ATM’s fleet. The Tramlink vehicles will have a seating capacity for 66 passengers, 44 of them will travel on folding seats and 22 on fixed seats.

Tramlink

The development of the Tramlink vehicles was started by Vossloh Kiepe, a subsidiary of Vossloh Group. Therefore, they were initially branded as Vossloh Tramlink. The first delivery of this type was performed to the German city of Rostock in order to replace the old Czech-made Tatra trams. 13 Tramlink vehicles are still in operation in Rostock. In 2012 Brazilian company EMTU operating public transport in Greater São Paulo ordered 22 Tramlink units. Another order was concluded in 2013 with Stern & Hafferl Verkehrsgesellschaft, a transport operator in Upper Austria, for supplying 11 trams.

In 2016 Vossloh Group sold its rolling stock division to Stadler Rail. The name of the vehicles was shortened to Tramlink. After the rebranding, Stadler has concluded two deals for the delivery of the Tramlink vehicles: 9 units for Lugano, Switzerland, and 14 units for Erfurt, Germany.