Myanmar state-owned railway company, Myanma Railways, awarded Mitsubishi Corporation two contracts for the supply of a total fleet of 246 train cars for Yangon rail connections. The cars, which will include Japanese components and equipment, will be built by Spain’s largest manufacturer of rolling stock, Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles.
JPY 69 billion (EUR 546.2 million) is the total value of the two contracts which will be covered by an international-yen – loan agreement between the governments of Japan and Myanmar.
The first contract involves the delivery of 66 cars that will be used in the Yangon Circular Railway (YCR) while under the second one Mitsubishi will supply 180 cars to operate on the Yangon-Mandalay railway line.
They will be delivered to Myanmar in stages between 2023 and 2025.
The Yangon Circular Railway project is part of the overall plan to upgrade and modernise the Yangon rail connections. The cars delivered by Mitsubishi will run on the approximately 46 km of track that loop around central Yangon, Myanmar’s largest commercial metropolis. At present, it takes a train roughly 170 minutes to complete the loop, but the modernisation plan should cut that to about 110 minutes. Yangon Circular Railway is the local commuter rail network that serves the Yangon metropolitan area. This spring, the track reconstruction and construction was completed. The project’s completion will offer increased train speeds from 48 km/h to 60 km/h.
The Yangon-Mandalay rail project is part of the second phase of the work being done to improve the line’s status and provide additional capacity while reducing the travel time. The cars delivered by Mitsubishi will run on the approximately 620 km of tracks that connect Yangon to Myanmar’s second-largest city of Mandalay. The project includes renovation and modernisation of the rail facilities and equipment along the rail route connecting the two country’s largest cities. Yangon-Mandalay connection plays a major role in transport since it is connecting and passing through the Myanmar main cities such as Naypyitaw, Bago, Taungoo and Mandalay. The improvements to the line will almost halve the current 15-hour journey, cutting it to roughly eight hours.
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