The representatives of SNCF, the French state train operator, which once accounted for nearly all the trainmaker's orders, were only observers at the ceremony. Attention focused instead on executives from NTV, an Italian private start-up company that will be the train's first operator.

The scene underlined how important export orders have become to trainmakers, which were once mainly suppliers to their countries' state rail monopolies. It also illustrated how liberalisation is making private operators increasingly important to companies such as Alstom, the world's number two trainmaker.

The two trends are among the most important influencing Philippe Mellier, chief executive, as he tries to drive up the profitability of the division, which made earnings before interest and taxes of €293m ($456m) on €5.29bn sales for the year to March 31.

Besides his eye-catching initiative to develop a freight version of his flagship high-speed trains, Mr Mellier is also taking more prosaic steps. He is ensuring the company competes only for business that is guaranteed to bring a good return, trying to compete better in the freight locomotive market.

He rails against non-European companies he believes have unfair advantages over Alstom, operating from protected home markets but seeking to export to the lucrative European market.

"We don't have fair access to a number of markets," he says.

Alstom, Bombardier Transportation - the world's number one trainmaker - and Siemens, the number three, all have standard products that they seek to sell to buyers worldwide. They need significant orders from several customers to cover the development costs.

However, Alstom's large order book of about €18bn allows it to be disciplined about which tenders it chases, Mr Mellier says.

"We try to concentrate on tenders we believe we can win because we have the right product or it's a repeat order," he says. "There's no point in rushing for a project and not having all the right tools and the right re-sources."

Alstom recently lost an order for freight diesel locomotives from SNCF. It also pulled out of Britain's controversial InterCity Express programme for new high-speed trains.

"We thought it would be extremely difficult to answer the customers' requirement looking at the products we had," Mr Mellier says. "So we thought we would pass this time."

In China, Alstom is exporting only relatively old high-speed train designs because it fears letting local manufacturers know how newer trains are made, as Chinese contracts would require. Other manufacturers - including Germany's Siemens and Japan's Kawasaki Heavy Industries - have been less cautious.

"I'm not so sure we want to export our latest technology," Mr Mellier says.

In Europe, private companies are growing important not only in the passenger sector represented by NTV, but especially in freight.

Private operators focus far more on meeting the needs of their passengers and freight users, according to Mr Mellier. Unlike state-owned operators, they leave train design and, often, maintenance wholly to trainmakers.

"The traditional model of the state-owned operator doing everything will disappear," he says.

Alstom has largely missed out on a market created by liberalisation - for locomotives able to use more than one country's electrification and signalling systems. State train operators' locomotives traditionally operated only in their home country.

However, Alstom's Prima III locomotive is designed to take it into that market.

"Maybe we were late - yes, I agree with that," Mr Mellier says. "But we will have the latest technology, fully interoperable."

Yet Mr Mellier remains frustrated by the competition he faces in Europe. While Alstom is in effect barred from Japan and South Korea, Japan's Hi-tachi has won a big UK order and South Korea's Rotem has sold metro cars in Germany and Greece. Meanwhile, EMD of the US supplies freight locomotives in Europe.

"We are for competition and we like competition," Mr Mellier says. "But it has to be open and it has to be done in a transparent way, so we get reciprocity bet-ween our markets."