Scientific paper ID 838 : 2013/3

The Croatian Railways rolling stock is much characterized by diversity of types, models and series. This kind of system generates high maintenance costs and the most vehicles are obsolete and unavailable. Although Croatian Railways endeavored in the last few years in acquiring some new vehicles and modernizing some old series, the most of the rolling stock is more than 30 years old. The worldwide economic crisis has brought rail cargo transport to stagnation, but on the other hand passenger transport, especially in the urban-suburban service, offers much better perspective. Old, unreliable and uncomfortable rolling stock poses a strong set back to competitiveness towards other rail operators or even more, other modes of passenger transport. Therefore factors like quality of service, punctuality, price and comfortable journey will be the key for attracting passengers. These ments are to be met by acquisition of new multiple-unit trains for urban-suburban and regional transport. The paper is analyzing the productivity of the old multiple unit trains in the past period. On the basis of transport demand and passenger transport prognosis for the next period the acquiring of new sets of multiple-unit trains is proposed. There are also determined the technical characteristics for the new multiple-units as well as the needed structure of the trains.