MARATHON2OPERATION

To achieve the objectives of the European Commission White Paper on Transport 2011 aiming at a shift to rail of 30% of road freight over 300km by 2030, rail freight transport market share has to increase strongly. The market requirement are competitiveness, reliability, flexibility, frequency and information. The FP7 Marathon project demonstrators have already shown the feasibility of 1500m long coupled heavy trains. M2O project, financed by Shift2Rail initiative, is a step further to implement and to overcome the results of the Marathon project which has shown the feasibility of the long heavy consist created by coupling two trains with distributed traction: one locomotive (Traction Unit) at the head of the train and one other remote controlled in the middle. The Marathon train, tested twice in France in 2014, has a total lenght of 1524m, and is composed by 72 wagons for a total of 210 TEUs carrying 4036 tons. M2O aims at overcoming the configurations of the Marathon project with long..