Alstom has delivered the 100th unit of the 12,000 horsepower WAG-12 class freight locomotive to Indian Railways, the manufacturer has said in a statement today. The 100th unit is numbered, unsurprisingly, 60100.
First commissioned in May 2020, the WAG-12 class of locomotives has already clocked 50 lakh kilometres over the course of the past 12 months, claims Alstom.
The manufacturer had entered into a contract with IR in 2015 to supply 800 units of the Prima T8 based WAG-12 for freight operations. The locos are manufactured at Alstom’s dedicated Madhepura locomotive factory. Spread across 250 acres, Alstom says that this site is built to international safety and quality standards. The factory has an installed production capacity of 120 locomotives per annum. Alstom claims to have achieved over 85% indigenization.
WAG-12 Maintenance and Training
Maintenance of these units will be conducted at depots in Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh and at Nagpur in Maharashtra. The Saharanpur depot is already functional while the depot at Nagpur is under construction. The Nagpur depot will be functional next year, according to Alstom.
The Saharanpur depot houses a training centre for loco pilots and is equipped with a loco simulator and smart classrooms. More than 500 loco pilots have been trained at the facility, says Alstom. An additional 500 will be trained annually, the statement says.
Speaking on this milestone, Alain SPOHR, Managing Director – Alstom India said, “I’m pleased to mention that despite challenges posed by COVID-19, we have been able to successfully manufacture and deliver 100 e-Locos to the Indian Railways in less than a year. . Due to the intricacy of the project, it is really an honour to work on a first-of-its-kind ‘Make in India’ project that resulted in a technology breakthrough for the nation”.
