OREANDA-NEWS. February 02, 2011. The President of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin made a working visit to Slovakia, where he attended the ceremonial acceptance of the pilot batch of articulated flatcars manufactured by Tatravagonka for TransContainer, a subsidiary of Russian Railways. The acceptance took place at the container terminal in Dobra, reported the press-centre of Russian Railways.

The ceremony was also attended by Jan Figel, Minister of Transport, Post and Telecommunications of the Slovak Republic, Alexei Belyaev, chairman of the board at Tatravagonka, Petr Baskakov, CEO of TransContainer and other officials.

"The new stage of cooperation between Russian Railways and Tatravagonka started a little over 2 years ago, and today we can already see the results. Fitted platforms, the first batch of which are now being delivered to the customer, are just one area where we are cooperating. We are also working together to create universal boxcars with increased body size, as well as a new bogie whose dynamic characteristics and track performance are significantly better than those used today," said Yakunin at the ceremony.

According to Yakunin, there are good prospects to implement the project to construct a 1520mm broad gauge railway line from Kosice to Bratislava and Vienna in cooperation with the Company’s partners from Ukraine, Slovakia and Austria.

A number of important documents were signed aimed at deepening cooperation in railway engineering between Russia and Slovakia.

TransContainer and Transmash signed a memorandum of understanding to enhance cooperation on developing the market for rolling stock.

Tikhvin Carriage Works and Tatravagonka signed an agreement on strategic partnership to develop, produce and introduce innovative railway engineering products, in particular the use of truck design Barber S-2-R for Tatravagonka to manufacture new types of freight rolling stock for Russia.

An agreement was also signed to acquire Tatravagonka from the Integrated Carriage Building Company, a subsidiary of Transmashholding, 50% of the shares in Transmash in the town of Engels in Russia’s Saratov region.