MOROCCO IS ACCELERATING! feature - Alstom

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technology
Coradia Duplex new generation in Valenciennes, in France.
The origins of a concept…
Everything began in the United States
with the famous double-decker diligence.
Then, in 1870, the concept was used for
the fi rst time on rail. Strange double-decker
cars began to be seen on American railway
lines. An additional incongruity was
that they had the appearance of a cabriolet:
a conventional passenger ‘container’
for the lower level, and an area open
to the elements for the upper level.
The idea was to enable passengers to admire
the beauties of the American landscape.
Half a century later and on the opposite
side of the Atlantic, the concept resurfaces
in Germany and in France… without
the cabriolet option because of less
favourable climates. Dedicated to suburban
transport in France and to regional services
in Germany, the double-decker was met
with a degree of success, until the outbreak
of the Second World War. This was followed
by another gap, this time of twenty years,
then by a marked recovery, in the late 1960s,
in response to the growing demographic
pressure of the Ile-de-France Region.
The Nord-Pas-de-Calais, with its heavily
populated urban areas, rapidly followed suit.
The real technological breakthrough
occurred, however, in the early 1980s with
the ‘invention’ of the double-decker electric
railcar. The idea was both simple and
revolutionary: to combine strength
– particularly for acceleration – with high
capacity. Considered by many experts
at the time as a fanciful technological dream,
the project nevertheless saw the light of
day thanks to the perseverance of engineers
at the SNCF and the CIMT – Compagnie
industrielle de matériel de transport –
an industrial and engineering entity that