Siemens Mobility and Railpool are moving ahead with a locomotive service hub in Verona at the Interporto logistics site in northern Italy.

This is reported by the railway transport news portal Railway Supply.

Locomotive service hub in Verona by Siemens and Railpool
Photo: Siemens

The companies have signed an agreement to buy a 15,000 m² plot from Consorzio ZAI and plan to invest about €20 million in the facility, according to a Siemens Mobility press release.

The new hub is intended to service locomotives from different manufacturers and to handle light repair work. The depot design includes five tracks for maintenance activities, plus a dedicated track with a wheelset lathe for re-profiling wheelsets.

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In terms of capabilities, the site is set up to work with DC electric locomotives and multi-system units, with testing planned for this type of traction. It is also expected to support servicing of the most common locomotive signalling systems used across Europe.

Locomotive service hub in Verona and freight growth

Siemens Mobility and Railpool link the expansion of service infrastructure to expected growth in rail freight in Europe. They are working on the assumption that, once the Brenner Base Tunnel between Austria and Italy opens as planned in 2032 (project information is available on the BBT SE website), transalpine corridor capacity will double.

Siemens Mobility: Interporto Verona adds to its Italian footprint

For Siemens Mobility, this is not its first service operation in Italy. Since 2015, the company has run a service depot in Novara, west of Milan, providing full-cycle services for more than 120 locomotives operated by various freight operators running on the Trans-European Rhine–Alpine corridor. Overall, Siemens Mobility has more than 100 service centres, around 7,000 employees, and a presence in more than 30 countries.

Railpool: six depots, a spare-parts warehouse and the Vectron fleet

Railpool serves customers through six of its own depots, and the new Verona site is expected to help the company expand its service offering with support from its Italian subsidiary. The plan also draws on Railpool’s own warehouse, which holds more than 4,500 spare parts.

In 2024, Railpool signed a framework agreement with Siemens Mobility for the supply of up to 250 Vectron family locomotives, as reported by Railway Supply. The deal includes different variants of multi-system electric locomotives intended for operation in 16 European countries.

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