- Greece has ordered 23 new electric trains, the first major fleet renewal since before 2004.
- The deal secures €420 million in investments, of which €308 million is dedicated to new rolling stock.
- A firm 2027 delivery deadline is in place, backed by termination clauses and harsher penalties.
- New digital monitoring systems will replace paper-based oversight on the rail network.
- Travel time between Athens and Thessaloniki is expected to drop below 3.5 hours by 2026.
- The upgrade will improve suburban mobility and support tourism beyond city centers.
Greece has spent years talking about railways the way people talk about weather they cannot control — vaguely hopeful, mildly irritated, and resigned to delays — but the signing of a new order for 23 electric trains and the revision of the state’s contract with Hellenic Train marks something different: not a promise, not a plan, but a moment where the country has finally written a date on the calendar and dared everyone involved to take it seriously.
The agreement, which locks in 2027 as a hard deadline and secures €420 million in total investment, represents a shift away from the comfortable ambiguity that has long defined large infrastructure projects in Greece; this time, the numbers are tied to delivery, and delivery is tied to consequences.
Of the total investment, €308 million will go toward new rolling stock — the most significant private investment ever made in Greece’s land transport sector and, notably, the first purchase of new trains since before the 2004 Olympic Games, a detail that quietly explains much of what passengers have been enduring for the past two decades.
Under the deal, Greece will receive 23 next-generation Coradia Stream electric trains, built by Alstom, designed to operate both long-distance intercity routes and suburban networks. This dual role reflects how Greeks actually move rather than how railways were once imagined on paper. Twelve of these trains are earmarked for the Athens–Thessaloniki corridor, the spine of the national network and a route that has long deserved better, while the remaining eleven will serve suburban lines in Attica and Thessaloniki, where rail travel is less glamorous but far more consequential for daily life.
The trains themselves promise what Greek rail passengers have learned not to expect but still quietly hope for: increased capacity, step-free accessibility, interiors designed for people rather than endurance, and onboard safety systems that belong to the present century — including ETCS signaling and real-time monitoring through TCMS, systems that do not merely exist on brochures but are meant to function continuously, visibly, and without improvisation.
What makes this contract different, however, is not just what is being bought, but how the state has finally chosen to protect itself.
For the first time, the agreement includes a termination clause if the trains do not arrive in Greece by 2027, along with substantially harsher penalties for delays, service failures, and poor maintenance—an explicit acknowledgment that goodwill does not run railways and that accountability must be contractual, not rhetorical. Passenger compensation is also doubled in cases of serious incidents, and mandatory safety training for personnel is no longer optional; it is now formally required.
The most quietly radical change lies in oversight. The Hellenic Railways Organization (OSE) is moving away from paper-based supervision — a phrase that sounds harmless until one considers what it has meant in practice — toward a geolocation-based digital monitoring system that allows real-time tracking of routes, performance, and compliance, directly linking what happens on the rails to payments, penalties, and responsibility.
In parallel, infrastructure works along the Athens–Thessaloniki axis continue, with full signaling, remote control, and automatic braking systems expected to be operational by summer 2026. Once complete, travel time between Greece’s two largest cities is projected to drop below 3.5 hours, a threshold that does not just shave minutes off a journey but fundamentally changes how rail competes with roads and short-haul flights.
For travel and tourism, the implications extend well beyond speed.
Modern trains, improved accessibility, and stronger suburban services in Attica and Thessaloniki open quieter doors to coastal areas, archaeological sites, and secondary destinations that have long existed just beyond convenient reach, allowing visitors to move outward rather than cluster inward, easing pressure on city centers while redistributing economic activity more evenly.
Looking further ahead, planned extensions toward Patras and the Peloponnese suggest a rail network that finally begins to resemble a web rather than a line, supporting leisure travel, business mobility, and multi-stop itineraries that do not require a rental car as a prerequisite for curiosity. To the north, improvements to routes and cross-border corridors toward Bulgaria and Romania could strengthen overland arrivals and revive rail-based international travel from Central and Southeastern Europe — slower, perhaps, but more deliberate and more sustainable.
Railway stations, too, are being reconsidered, not as neglected thresholds one rushes through, but as entry points capable of shaping first impressions, anchoring neighborhoods, and functioning as modern transport hubs rather than relics tolerated out of necessity.
Taken together, this rail modernization effort aligns neatly — and somewhat belatedly — with Greece’s broader ambitions for sustainable tourism, reducing the environmental footprint of travel while quietly correcting a long-standing imbalance between aspiration and infrastructure. Whether the country truly enters a new rail era will depend, as always, on execution, but for the first time in years, the timetable feels less like a suggestion and more like a challenge Greece has decided to accept.
