This Trenitalia plant is one of three on a national level which takes care of passenger carriages. All rolling stock comes through here for the periodical overhauling which has to be carried out after hundreds of thousands of kilometres have been covered.
A century old and not looking it. The Voghera Cyclical Maintenance Workshops (CMW) celebrated their centenary last year and today they still represent one of the most important works in the whole of Italy for the periodical overhauling of carriages which have covered 1,200,000 km. The craftsmanship methods of past decades have been replaced by modern procedures which require highly qualified and expert personnel. Electronics has now become essential even in this field, but there is still a lot of important mechanical work to be done. In fact it is in this area that the Voghera CMW is leading the field with its cryogenic shrink-fitting system for putting wheels onto axles, the first ever installed in a Trenitalia Workshop. We talked about this and how complex and intricate rolling stock maintenance is with plant manager Lorenzo Mancini, Engineer, who introduced us to a world, whose special features are not very well-known even amongst the workers, which is essential if rolling stock is to be returned into service for the safety and comfort of passengers.
Mr. Mancini, the Voghera Cyclical Maintenance Workshop is one of the most important workshops in the entire FSI Group. Before finding out how it is organized and what activities it carries out, can you give us an idea as to how rolling stock maintenance is organized within Trenitalia?
There are basically two types of Maintenance Workshops, First Level and Second Level ones. The works belong to Trenitalia, FSI Group’s transport company. The First Level or Routine Maintenance workshops answer to the maintenance works of the various Divisions, whereas the Second Level or Cyclical Maintenance Workshops (once called Major Repair Workshops) answer to the Technical Department. Today we have nine Second Level workshops: three are dedicated to the cyclical maintenance of carriages, three to locomotives and three to ETRs (electric trains) and light vehicles. Voghera is one of the three works specialized in carriage maintenance, along with the works in Florence and in Santa Maria La Bruna, near Naples. Locomotives are taken care of in Foligno, Verona and Rimini, which in particular takes care of diesel-powered vehicles, whereas in Vicenza, Bologna and Foggia maintenance is carried out on electric trains.
by Franco Tanel – photo F.T.
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