German experience to assist Bulgarian railways

 

The partnership between Bulgarian and German railways is of long standing. This fact was brought out during the official visit of the Minister of Transport, Petar Mutafchiev, to the Federal Republic at end-February.

After talks with Wolfgang Tiefensee, Federal Minster of Transport, Construction and Public Works, the representatives of the company Wiebe declared that they intend to place bids in tenders for railway transport projects. Another company, RWE Solutions, showed interest in tunnel construction.

Fruitful contacts were established between NRIC and DB headquarters in Berlin. In the Head Office of DB, the management teams of the two railways agreed to promote with joint efforts the development of transit cargo transport from Germany via Bulgaria to the Near East. The Executive Director of BDZ, Oleg Petkov, announced that a joint working group will be established to develop new projects. During talks with the CEO of DB, Hartmut Mehdorn, the two parties noted the positive results from the bilateral agreement on logistics and utilisation of DB freight rolling stock for the export of components and aggregates for refrigeration equipment, produced by Liebherr, to Central and Western Europe. Another initiative was also assessed as positive – the transport of Ford car components in swap bodies by rail from Cologne to Kosekoy in Turkey.

The 500th Desiro Classic was commissioned on the day when the Bulgarian delegation visited the workshop facilities of Siemens in Krefeld-Urdingen. This Desiro is part of the delivery for BDZ.