The story
CAF was an acronym for the earlier name of Compañía Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles, as well as for Construcciones y Auxiliar de Feres.
Fábrica de Hierros San Martín
In 1860, Domingo Goitia, Martín Usabiaga and José Francisco Arana established in the city of Besain, next to the Northern railway, the company Fábrica de Hierros San Martín, whose main activity was puddling furnaces and cylinder rolling.
La Maquinista Guipuzcoana
In 1892, Francisco de Goitia (Domingo Goitia's son and heir) joined the Marquess of Urquijo to set up La Maquinista Guipuzcoana, whose main activity was the operation of machinery and the forging and construction of railway rolling stock for other companies in the area like Compañía del Tranvía de San Sebastián.
In 1898, it set up its plant in Beasain, Gipuzkoa. In 1901, Maquinista Guipuzcoana was taken over by the Sociedad Española de Construcciones Metálicas (SECM), which already owned 5 factories. In 1901, the SECM secured a contract to manufacture 50 ore transport wagons for the railway line from Bilbao to Portugalete, followed by others sold to the Castro-Alen mining railway and the La Reunión mines, in Seville.
Each of the factories of the SECM, located in cities like Bilbao, Gijón or Linares among others, plus the new facilities in Madrid, were dedicated to the manufacture of a specific component, being the Besain factory was dedicated to the manufacture of railcars. To do so, they demolished all the manufacturing facilities inherited from La Maquinista Guipuzcoana in Beasin in order to build a new factory designed by the German engineer Franz Melaun and the architect Luis Landecho. The new facilities had a capacity for the full construction of up to 3,000 railcars per year. The production of railcars started in the new installations on November 1, 1904, just 27 months after the cornerstone was settled.
This factory had a workforce of 469 employees, of whom almost 200 were foreigners, mainly of German origin. On March 13, 1905, its first order of fifteen hopper cars was delivered to the Sociedad de Gasificación Industrial (in English, Industrial Gasification Society) in Madrid.
In 1905 the company changed its name to Fábrica de Vagones de Beasain (FVB). The consolidation of the company took place during the years of the World War I thanks to the demand from the Belgian and French railways.
Compañía Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles
Compañía Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF) was founded on March 4, 1917, for the construction, purchase, sale, or rental of railcars and other related items intended for the transportation and operation of railroads and trams, and specializing in freight car production and with a total of 1,600 employees. In 1922, following various expansions, CAF's share capital was distributed between the French group Firminy and the Urquijo group, although ownership of the Besain factory remained in the hands of the SECM group, which leased it to CAF operation.
Read the full text
In 1925, Banco Urquijo acquired all the shares in CAF that belonged to foreign investors, most of whom were French. The operation involved two capital increases by CAF and culminated in the acquisition of the modernized Beasain plant, which extended across the municipalities of Beasain, Lazcano, and Villafranca de Oria. In terms of production, in 1929 CAF was responsible for up to 30% of Spanish railcar production. In addition, during the 1920s and 1930s, its portfolio included the production of electric locomotives and freight cars.
The Spanish Civil War led to the militarization of facilities and production of CAF. In the 1940s, after the Spanish Civil War, a period during which the facilities were militarized, CAF began to expand by leasing workshops in Irún and Madrid. In 1947 it acquired part of the Sociedad de Material Móvil y Construcciones de Zaragoza.
Since 1958, the company has modernized and enlarged its Beasain plant and expanded its activity to include all kinds of rolling stock. In 1968, CAF began manufacturing the Jeepster Commando, marketed by Viasa. In line with this, in 1969 CAF created its Research and Development Unit, which increased the company's competitiveness and intensified the focus on in-house technology.
Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles
In 1971, the company adopted its current name Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles when the existing Compañía Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF) merged with Material Móvil y Construcciones (MMC). MMC was a company from Zaragoza founded in 1920 but with origins at the end of the 19th century, when the family business Talleres Escoriaza joined with the French businessman Nicolás Carde to develop mechanical carpentry and specialize in the manufacture of railway and tram car bodies, such as the line to Torrero in Zaragoza.
In 2001, CAF participated in the Madrid-Barcelona high-speed rail project, and around that time began its internationalization process in countries such as Hong Kong, United Kingdom, and the United States. In 2002, the Comprehensive Railway Maintenance Technology Center was inaugurated.
In 2004, CAF deliveried of the first variable gauge, dual-voltage high-speed train. The next year, CAF achieved the first contract for the sale of a Spanish high-speed train abroad, to provide trains to the high-speed line connecting Ankara and Istanbul. By 2009, CAF was already present in countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Chile, and Argentina, and 42% of its turnover corresponded to exports. That year, presented the prototype of the Fast Charging Accumulator (FCA) system to enable light rail or tram circulation without the need for overhead power lines or catenary systems. In 2011, launched the family of very high-speed trains that can reach 350 km/h, Oaris.
In 2018, CAF took over the Polish bus manufacturer Solaris. In 2021, SNCF Voyageurs awarded CAF a contract to supply 28 trains for the lines connecting Paris with Limoges, Toulouse and Clermont-Ferrand. The company also acquired the Talent 3 platform from competitor Bombardier Transportation in 2022, as well as the Coradia Polyvalent platform and the plant in Reichshoffen from train manufacturer Alstom. This was a condition imposed by the European Commission's competition authority for the approval of the 2021 takeover of Bombardier Transportation by Alstom. The same year, CAF purchased one of Alstom's factories in France, located in the town of Reichshoffen.
CAF began the construction of the Gelsenkirchen-Bismarck railway depot to house the fleet of the regions of Lower Rhine and Münster in 2024, while securing a new contract with SNCF Voyageurs to supply 22 Intercités trains to cover the route between Bordeaux and Marseille. Also, obtained contracts to supply units for the metros in Santiago, Medellín and Madrid.
In 2025, CAF secured a contract worth nearly €100 million with the Syndicat des Mobilités de Touraine to supply 19 Urbos trams for the La Riche to Chambray-lès-Tours line, apart from receiving orders for trams in other French cities like Montpellier, Marseille and Grenoble, trains for the RER B line in Paris and for the regional trains in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, among other contracts. That year, the National Railway Company of Belgium (SNCB) announced that it had chosen CAF for a mega contract to renew its train fleet by 2034 worth several billion euros. The company also signed its first project in Morocco, as well as other contracts in Taipei, Cairo, Naples and Helsinki.
From Wikipedia’s article on Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5