Pakistan Railways was planning to procure as many as 25 diesel electric locomotives for various shunting points across the country which would help to replace outdated locomotives that to be soon be scrapped.
The project for the procurement and manufacturing of 25 shunting locomotives would be implemented in three years at an estimated cost of Rs. 14 billion, sources in the Ministry of Railways told APP.
Currently, they said that only 51 locomotives were being operated for this service against the 98 shunting points at various railway stations across the country. Additionally, most of the old locomotives would be discarded due to high maintenance costs. They said the project was aimed at procuring and manufacturing 25 shunting diesel electric locomotives of 2000-2200 horsepower HP to replace the overage and uneconomical locomotives.
The sources said the old locomotives were consumed excessive fuel and in most cases, high horsepower locomotives were under-utilized during shunting operations.
They said with the addition of the new locomotives would enhance the capacity of Pakistan Railways by removing the bottlenecks during the shunting of heavy load freight trains and the placement of freight loads at departure yards in Karachi, Lahore and other places.
The sources said the role of specially designed shunting locomotives was considered the backbone of train formation and train rake replacement at the platform as well as the removal of train rakes from the platform to the washing line and sick lines.
They said the locomotives were not directly involved in revenue generation but act as the supporting facilities for the placement, composition and decomposition of rolling stock. It was pertinent to mention here that the federal government has allocated Rs 2300 million in the current Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) to repair about 100 diesel-electric locomotives.
Separately, Pakistan Railways would receive first batch of 50 new coaches from China in December to upgrade current rolling stock and provide modern facilities to the passengers. “Out of total 230 coaches around 50 will be provided as completely built units and the remaining 184 to be manufactured in the county by the department’s engineers and technical staff under the supervision of the Chinese experts,” an official told APP.
He said the coaches would have the capacity to run at the train’s speed of 160 kilometers per hour and the teams of Pakistan Railways were in China for the inspection of the prototypes of the coaches as well as the modern high-capacity wagons. The official said the experts of China were also proving training to the technical staff of Pakistan Railways on manufacturing of such rolling stock. He said Pakistan Railway was planning to upgrade the dilapidated track as the Khanpur-Kotri section was not fit for high-speed train operation while most of the Main Line-I (ML-I) parts were fit for the 120km per hour train operation.
“After the completion of the ML-I project under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the entire ML-1 track would have the capacity to bear the rolling stock operations at the speed of 160km per hour,” he added. He said that under another similar nature contract, a Chinese company would manufacture 800 freight wagons and 20 brake wagons. The manufacturing of 184 coaches in Pakistan would be under the ‘Transfer of Technology’ project. For the coaches planned to be manufactured in Pakistan – Pakistan Railways Carriage Factory, Islamabad – the Chinese firm would provide spare parts and raw materials. The official said the teams of Pakistan Railways had left for China mid of August consisting of 18 officials for design inspections, 20 for other inspections and the others for participating in the training related to the transfer of technology.