The 300th electric locomotive from Alstom India was successfully delivered to the Indian Railways earlier this week. In order to meet its aggressive freight ambitions, the Indian Railways now has the capacity to operate large freight trains at fast speeds. Alstom is providing 800 powerful double-section locomotives with a combined 12,000 HP (9 MW) as part of a contract worth €3.5 billion. These locomotives, known by Indian Railways as WAG-12B, have a top speed of 120 km/h and can pull rakes weighing 6,000 tonnes.
The 300th e-loco was flagged off at Alstom’s cutting-edge locomotive maintenance depot in Nagpur, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened in December of last year.
Best-in-class depot
It is important to note that Alstom’s Nagpur Depot will be maintaining 250 WAG12B e-loco beginning from series 60251 as part of the contract. The most modern features and technologies are present in this depot, which enables proactive maintenance of India’s most sophisticated freight locomotives at considerably reduced costs.
The depot has a Centered Fleet monitoring (CFM) system that uses the Train Tracer and Health Hub systems to directly watch the fleet. The Prompt Response Service (PRS) is on call around-the-clock for loco support. Rainwater collection, zero discharge using effluent treatment and sewerage treatment plants, 100% LED lighting, daylight panels, occupancy monitors, vegetation, and a 1 MW rooftop solar plant provision are examples of environmentally friendly features of the depot.
Indigenous high-horsepower locomotives
The WAG-12B locomotives are being built at one of India’s largest integrated greenfield manufacturing facilities in Madhepura (Bihar), as part of a joint venture between Alstom and Indian Railways
- The facility has an installed production capacity of 120 locomotives per year, and Alstom has gradually achieved nearly 90% indigenization
- India has become the sixth country in the world to produce high-horsepower locomotives indigenously, with these powerful e-Locos
- The WAG-12B locomotives made their debut on the first fully operational sections of the Dedicated Freight Corridors two years ago
- The e-locos are equipped with Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBT) based propulsion technology. The use of this tech will enable considerable savings in energy consumption with the use of regenerative braking
(With agency inputs)