High-speed, Spanish version

By the end of 2010, Spain should be the country with the largest high-speed network in service – more than 2,500 kilometres, ahead of leading nations in this means of transport such as France or Japan. ArcelorMittal Asturias, in Spain, is contributing to this project by providing so far the vast majority of the rails used to build this critical infrastructure.

Our Asturian rail mill started producing rails to be used in the AVE (both the Spanish word for ‘bird’ and acronym of Alta Velocidad Española – Spanish High Speed) in 1990, and it expects to opt to all public competitions in order to keep on supplying the high-speed rails until 2020.

By then, and unless the Spanish austerity plan just announced by the government has an impact on the high speed investments, Spain will have a total of 10,000 km of high-speed lines and all capitals of the province will be connected to the network. This means that 90% of Spanish people will live less than 50 km away from an AVE station!

ArcelorMittal Asturias is not only producing rails for the Spanish high-speed network, though: Germany and Turkey also have a strong presence of our rails in their high-speed networks, and the mill has produced all kinds of rails for over 30 countries.

Why? Partly because of its technology, which allows rolling rails up to 90 metres long. This is an advantage for high-speed trains because longer rails mean less welding and less movement. “The longer the rail is, the more difficult it is to produce. The state-of-the-art devices of our finishing line allow us to be among the only high-speed producers in the world,” explains Pablo Bermejo, Rail mill manager of ArcelorMittal Asturias.

Thanks to our Asturian rails, you can travel today from Madrid to Barcelona in 2 hours 40 minutes, and soon it will be possible to go from London to the Costa del Sol by high-speed train…

Want to know more about our Asturian rails? Check out this video!

Collaboration: Gerardo Alonso and Alberto Carrero, ArcelorMittal Spain, Communications