The new trains will be able to switch from electric drive to diesel on the roughly one third of the 18,000-km network not yet electrified, thereby speeding up travel. The operator forecasts an estimated 90 mln passengers by 2030, compared with 68 million last year.

Newag is one of Poland’s largest carriageworks, along with fellow independent PESA, Canadian-owned Pafawag, and Hungarian-owned Kozlan. Its sales in 2023 amounted to over €250 million.

The train-maker was in the headlines this week for suing a cybersecurity firm for damaging its reputation by making serious allegations, which it denies doing.

In 2022, Newag was accused by one of its competitors of deliberately putting bugs in the computer systems of its trains, to win service contracts.

The startling claim was made by SPS, a train service contractor from Lower Silesia, who brought in computer hacker catchers Dragon Sector to investigate mysterious breakdowns of trains that seemed unfixable.

Dragon Sector alleged that the trains were deliberately programmed to have breakdowns that only Newag, and not its hapless rival, could fix.

Dragon then reported their findings to the Polish government’s cybercrime monitoring service, CERT. The story was published on the Onet website at the end of last year.

In its lawsuit Newag has, in turn, accused Dragon Sector of deliberately spreading untruths about the company, inspired by train-servicing rival SPS.