Alstom has delivered the 300th WAG12B electric locomotive to Indian Railways which is able to haul heavy freight trains at a high speed, to meet operator’s ambitious freight targets.
The event was celebrated in the presence of Naresh Lalwani, the General Manager of Central Railway, and senior officials from Alstom, along with other key dignitaries from Indian Railways.
The electric locomotive is capable of hauling ~6,000 tonne rakes at a top speed of 120 km/h.
The locomotive was delivered from Alstom’s state of the art locomotive maintenance depot in Nagpur, which was inaugurated by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in December 2022.
The WAG12B electric locomotive made its inaugural run on the first fully operational sections of the Dedicated Freight Corridors two years ago. Some of the key commodities moved by these locomotives include coal, cement, food grains, fertilisers, petrochemical products, minerals, and posts/ parcels, across 17 States and 2 Union Territories.
Equipped with Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBT) based propulsion technology, these e-locos will have considerable savings in energy consumption with the use of regenerative braking. The technology is also helpful towards making the acceleration process more efficient by reducing the heat generation and traction noise. Additionally, it will not only bring down operational costs, but also reduce the congestion faced by Indian Railways.
Alstom has been awarded a EUR 3.5 billion to supply Indian Railways 800 high-powered double-section locomotives of 12,000 HP (9 MW) for freight service.
As part of the contract, Alstom’s Nagpur Depot will be maintaining 250 WAG12B e-loco starting from series 60251.
Nagpur Depot completes more than 7 months of operations and records over 1.6 million service defect free kilometres for the Nagpur fleet. The site was implemented in the Public Private Partnership (PPP) model, where supervisors are from Alstom and technicians from Indian Railways.
This depot is equipped with the latest technologies and features to anticipate breakdowns thereby enabling proactive maintenance of India’s most advanced freight locomotives at significantly lower costs.
The depot has 12 tracks for maintenance fitted with hi-tech equipment. The depot is equipped with Centred Fleet monitoring (CFM) system to remotely monitor the fleet via Health hub and Train Tracer system. The Prompt Response Team (PRT) is deployed for 24 x 7 loco attention. Green features like rainwater harvesting, zero discharge using effluent treatment plant and sewerage treatment plant, 100% LED lights, daylight panels, occupancy sensors, greenery and provisioned for 1 MW rooftop solar plant. This is the second such facility set up by Alstom, after the depot at Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, which houses the first 250 locomotives delivered to Indian Railways.
The WAG-12B locomotive are being built at one of India’s largest integrated greenfield manufacturing facilities at Madhepura (Bihar), under a joint venture between Alstom and Indian Railways. This is the largest Foreign Direct Investment project in the Indian Railway sector. The facility has an installed production capacity of 120 locomotives per annum and Alstom has progressively achieved near 90% indigenisation. With these powerful e-locos being manufactured within the country, India has become the 6th in the world to join the club of countries producing high horsepower locomotives indigenously.
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