The ground has already begun to move on the plot that will house the future workshop where Alstom will carry out the maintenance of the ten trains with which Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya (FGC) will connect the Catalan capital with El Prat Airport, with a service that will be launched between the end of 2026 and the beginning of 2027.
The workshop will have an area of 3,500 square meters in an area annexed to the Alstom factory. The works will last for about a year, and are part of an operation that will involve an investment of 177 million euros by FGC. Of the total, 107 million will be for the design, manufacture and commissioning of the new vehicles, and 70 will be for maintenance tasks for 15 years.
The new workshop will include two maintenance tracks, auxiliary workshops, a warehouse, dependencies for workers and project offices. The facilities, whose construction project will be carried out by Comsa, will also include the construction of the new auxiliary services workshop and the railway connection with the Adif network.
The start of the workshop works represents "a step forward to advance in this new service" to the airport, defended the president of FGC, Carles Ruiz, who visited the works together with the general director of the Catalan railway operator, Alicia Valle; the president of Alstom for Europe, Gian Luca Erbacci, and the president of the company in Spain and Portugal, Leopoldo Maestu.
This new Alstom workshop and work center in Catalonia "is a sample of this capacity and closeness with our clients" of the company, added the president and CEO in Spain and Portugal of Alstom, a company that employs 1,100 people in Catalonia.
While the works begin, the construction of the trains that will connect with El Prat continues to advance. The Coradia Stream trains, with a capacity of 656 passengers, will be accessible, without access steps from the platform and will have an automatic ramp at the doors near the reduced mobility area. The forecast is that the first of the trains will be ready in summer to be subjected to the first validation tests.
In addition, each convoy will have 20 panoramic screens with train information, and another nine screens for airport information, with data on flight departures and arrivals. Furthermore, all vehicles will have spaces to store luggage. The trains will run along 22.7 kilometers and nine stations that are currently under construction.
The new FGC service will connect the city center with the two airport terminals, with a frequency of every 15 minutes and a journey time of just over 20 minutes. As Ruiz has argued, the new service will place Barcelona "alongside the best airports in the world in terms of rail accessibility."