Railways runs its most powerful Made in India locomotive

The Indian Railways' most powerful 12000 HP Made in India locomotive made its maiden commercial run between Deen Dayal Upadhaya and Shivpur stations in Uttar Pradesh on Monday, the national transporter said.

Built by French company Alstom under the government's Make in India programme at the Railways' Madhepura factory in Bihar, these engines are the highest-powered locomotives that will run on Indian rails.

All 800 of these locos are being manufactured indigenously while they have been designed at the company's engineering centre in Bengaluru.

The first train, consisting of 118 wagons, using the locomotive departed from Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Station at 2:08 pm for Dhanbad division of East Central Railway,.

"The locomotive is capable of working on railway tracks with conventional OHE lines as well as on Dedicated Freight corridors with high rise OHE lines. The locomotive has air-conditioned driver cabs on either side.

"It is equipped with regenerative braking system which provides substantial energy savings during operations. These high horse power locomotives will help to decongest the saturated tracks by improving average speed of freight trains," the statement from Railways said.

As part of the largest Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) project of the Indian Railways, the Ministry of Railways and Alstom inked a Joint Venture worth Rs 25,000 crore in 2015.

The overall project is for manufacturing of 800 double-section electric locomotives of 12000 HP for freight service and its associated maintenance for a period of 11 years.

The scope also includes setting up of a manufacturing plant at Madhepura (Bihar) for building the e-locos and two maintenance depots at Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh and Nagpur, Maharashtra.