In August 2021, our company submitted an application for financial support from the Operational Programme Enterprise and Innovation for Competitiveness of the Ministry of Industry and Trade for the project “Innovation of overhead line for speed 200 km/h and more”, which was approved under project No. CZ.01.1.02/0.0/0.0/21_373/0027152. The main objective of the project was the acquisition of two railway production and assembly units consisting of two multi-purpose vehicles OCPD001_CZ and one embedded unwinding car, which is a constant tension stretching unit – CTSU211, designed to produce the innovative overhead contact line through an innovative production process. The project also allowed us to apply the results of the completed development in the field of new catenary components and the deployment of the calculation method of the length of the hangers with their pre-production in our production centre in Česká Třebová. The renowned Italian manufacturer Tesmec Rail S.r.l. succeeded in the tender for the supply of rail production and assembly units. The production of such special railway units took almost a year, followed by an equally demanding phase of approval for their operation on the lines in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It should be added here that this is mainly an approval process for the OCPD traction unit, which must meet not only the technical requirements for interoperability, but also other national safety and operational regulations of the infrastructure manager. The OCPD001_CZ vehicle is equipped with the mobile part of the LS06 and ETCS CAF AURIGA train protection systems. AŽD Praha s.r.o. and ČMŽO – elektronika s.r.o. participated in the delivery and installation of the train protection systems as subcontractors. At the beginning of 2023, as part of the approval process, the units were put into trial operation and could be involved in the production and assembly process. The section of the IV. transit railway corridor Sudoměřice – Votice belonging to the Trans-European Transport Network TEN-T was selected as a pilot deployment of special railway units. This line section was selected by the Railway Administration as one of the pilots for increasing the line speed within the ongoing modernisation from 160 km/h to 200 km/h. Here, these production and assembly units completed the implementation of the upgraded catenary in 04/2023, verifying both the passability and the correctness of the installation. The basic prerequisite for achieving this speed during the planned measurement of the parameters of the upgraded overhead contact line by a measuring vehicle has thus been fulfilled. The implementation of the upgraded overhead contact line in this section involved higher tensions in the conductors and the associated use of conductors with higher mechanical resistance.

Photodocumentation from the implementation of the upgraded overhead line within the section. Sudoměřice – Votice