Page 78 - Vía Libre Special - 25 Years of Spanish High Speed Rail

SPECIAL

years of Spanish high speed rail railway album

The human factor: The future

was beginning

Atocha command centre with interlock
screens in the background.
O

On starting to write this article, the first thing I
thought about was all those people who in the
early 1990s made it possible to transform the rail
network in Spain into what is now; the future
we dreamed of. For many of us that future began

Work on points on the Madrid-Seville high speed line.

on April 21, 1992, when at 7.00 in the morning
two AVE trains left Madrid and Seville. “The fu-
ture started”.

These three words were engraved in the
minds of the team of pioneers, and they were
pioneers, which made up the Operations De-
partment, with the backing of the President, the
CEO and the Managing Director. There were not
many of us who at that time believed that the
dream was possible. We had little outside help,
many people doubted our ability to make the
dream come true, but time proved that we were
able to pull it off.
In 1992 a group of people acquired a servi-
ce commitment with ourselves and with our so-
ciety to help modernize Spain and claim a higher
ranking place in Europe. We became militant, hi-
Welcoming service on the platforms ghly militant, supporters of a project that captu-
of Puerta de Atocha station alongside two passenger
carriages of a Series 100 AVE trainset red our imagination and to which we dedicated
with the original AVE livery. hours of effort, work, energy and enthusiasm.

78 Vía Libre • Special 25th Anniversary of the AVE Edition