Trenitalia Minuetto

Commuter train for Alstom

The Trenitalia Minuetto train is a commuter model for the Italian railway system commissioned by the Italian railway carrier Tranitalia to Alstom (epa: ALO), the France based train builder. The design was driven by extensive user-mapping and passenger flow mapping. Its accessibilty for disabled travelers but also for comfort in the busy rush hour schedules for travalers and their (excessive) baggage. Essential in modern traveling is the timing of travelers hopping on and off and their sorting on the station’s platform and how to optimize the passenger flow. In a period of 3 months of user-mapping and user-experience studies a new bench mark was set in train traveling on this regional commuter for Alstom. 

The train’s lightweight wagons are made of several aluminum extrusions on which different components are welded, making almost each wagon a modular design, depending on its lay-out. The train’s head and tail are constructed of bended, forced and welded aluminum plates, each component carefully engineered for its optimum weight-strentgh ratio. The design of the interior is 80% modular and 20% specific. Designed and developed at the Italdesign Giugiaro design center. Extensive design studies show the reasearch behind an appealing but affordable solution that could bring this model forward for decades to come.