Thursday, March 6th, 2014
SEOUL, KOREA - Hyundai Rotem, a Hyundai Group company specializing in rolling stock, will build bullet train cars for a newly laid high-speed railway between Wonju and Gangreung ahead of the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. The company said on March 5 that it signed a contract worth 494 billion won with Korea Railroad Corp. to deliver 150 train cars.
Hyundai Rotem will build the 15 sets (each set consisting of 10 cars including 2 locomotive cars, 1 first-class car, and 7 economy-class cars) at its Changwon plant in South Gyeongsang Province. the 113.7-kilometer Wonju-Gangreung line will be operational by the end of 2017.
Each set of the bullet train is 201 meters long with the weight of 406 tons. The maximum speed is up to 300 kilometers an hour. The specs are almost identical to the ones for the Seoul-Gwangju line to be delivered by June next year. Once the line is open, passengers can travel directly to the site of the Winter Olympic games from Incheon International Airport in little more than one hour.
Separately, the company signed on the same day an agreement with Korail to deliver replacement cars for Seoul's Subway No. 1 Line worth 125 billion won. In all, the total order-winning volume for the day for Hyundai Rotem was 600 billion won, more than the average annual order volume of 530 billion won for the past five years.