“Silver Arrow”, the high-speed train operated by Italian-owned TRAINOSE which was presented with great fanfare at the 2018 Trade Fair in Thessaloniki in September, and is expected to cover the Athens-Thessaloniki route in just 3.5 hours, will not be put into service yet as the Greek railroad infrastructures are subpar to its specifications.

The whole presentation proved to be a complete fiasco, as after initial test runs in the Thessaloniki-Katerini railroad section, the state-of-the-art train which has 9 carriages and a capacity of 480 seats returned to Italy because the railway network in Greece is not ready to host it!

The problems arose from some technical discrepancies that have to do with the length of the train and the way electrification operates. In a statement, TRAINOSE noted that the presentation of “Silver Arrow” was made to present the upgrading of the company’s services.
Without committing to the use of the specific train, TRAINOSE said: “we can assure everyone that the railroad stock to be used after the completion of the infrastructure works will fulfill all the conditions necessary for the execution of the routes on the Athens-Thessaloniki route”.

TRAINOSE S.A. is a railway company in Greece which currently operates all passenger and freight trains on OSE lines. It was acquired in September 2017 by the Italian national railway company, Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane.