October 16, 2020: The Railway Ministry has approved Alstom-built 12,000 HP e-locos to run freight trains across the Indian Railways network at a maximum speed of 120 km per hour.
Soon, 12,000 HP electric locomotives, manufactured by Alstom to run freight trains! Recently, Piyush Goyal chaired Railway Ministry has approved Alstom-built 12,000 HP e-locos to run freight trains across the Indian Railways network at a maximum speed of 120 km per hour. Earlier this year, the national transporter began inducting the WAG 12B e-locomotives, which are said to be the most powerful locos to run on Indian Railways tracks. These e-locos, cumulatively, have already clocked a distance of more than 1 million kilometres, thus providing a noteworthy fillip to India’s freight logistics landscape. According to a press release issued by Alstom, these e-locomotives will allow safer and faster movement of heavier freight train services that are capable to haul around 6000 tonnes freight at 120 km per hour of top speed.
These locos have been planned to be deployed for operations on major freight routes of the Indian Railways network including the Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFCs). These electric locomotives are expected to increase the average speed of Indian Railways freight trains by at least 20 to 25 km per hour.
According to Alain Spohr, Managing Director, Alstom India and South Asia, these locomotives have been equipped with Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBT) based propulsion technology. Due to the use of regenerative braking, it would lead to considerable savings in the consumption of energy. Also, this technology will help towards making the process of acceleration more efficient by minimizing the heat generation as well as traction noise. In addition to these benefits, this move will also bring down operational costs as well as reduce the congestion faced by the national transporter, he added.
According to Alstom, despite the COVID-19 pandemic challenges, the company restarted significant production at all its manufacturing facilities with the advent of Unlock 1.0, ensuring all permissions that are necessary as well as adhering to government protocols.
Source: Financial Express
