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Spain offers used engines for railways

Secretary Railways Shahid Hussain Raja said that the railway urgently needs 300 to 400 locomotives because most of the engines are out of service.
there is no harm in buying used engines if they have some service life left and are not that expensive either. We have tested chinese engines in past, and disappointed. May be not a bad idea to buy used/new engines from Spain, Germany or UK if they are affordable and serve the purpose
Already pathetic Chinese engines and bogies are causing damage to rail tracks and an extra burden due to their heavy maintenance required. Used engines will require heavy maintenance as usual.

300-400 numbers are huge, why not call for a global tender and evaluate the best suitable for your needs other than leaning for a single vendor. And without the price given, going for used engine doesn't make any sense. Better option will be to buy 50-100 new engines of shelf from the selected vendor and build the rest in home. It will be both cost effective and good for your R&D.
 
PR should consider these engines:

Evolution® Series Locomotive

These are excellent locomotives.
India has initialled an agreement with the USA (during Obama's visit to India) to be manufactured in India. Most of the existing Diesel Locomotives built in India are carry-ons of ALCO-GE designs, so setting up the production line will be a cinch.
Pakistan should definitely consider purchasing those locomotives,
 
I would nt mind if we purchase the 5000HP power engine from india instead of South korean 3000HP.

Yeah it will be economical and the stuff will be good in quality too.

I'm not saying go for peace buy rail engines while prepare to bomb each other in mean time :lol: Like India import cement from pakistan and Pakistan imports vegetables, machines, cotton while we hate each other.
 
No, thanks. Already pathetic Chinese engines and bogies are causing damage to rail tracks and an extra burden due to their heavy maintenance required. Used engines will require heavy maintenance as usual.

Should have bought from the Americans. Those two generals and the crooked GM finance have ruined PR's fate for a long time.
Thanks,for letting Chinese know,the quality of their products,i hope some Chinese read this post.
 
^^^^^^^^^^^ Troll By born ! And Thank you for pointing out these lines coz chines didnt saw them. Troll

Now what will Pakistan Do. :( One Pakistani tells some thing Bad for chines :(

GET A LIFE khote.
 
Fix the engines

Imran Bajwa

Has anybody heard about a country that can’t spare $40 million to save a national asset worth $10,000 million and over 90,000 jobs while still buying F-16s worth $3,000 million?

That fateful country is Pakistan and the national asset is Pakistan Railways. Let’s begin by analysing Indian Railways.

Indian Railways posted a net revenue growth of above 50 percent during the last four years, the same four years when Pakistan Railway employees were blocking trains to ensure their next month’s salary or the overhead electric cables were being stolen near Khanewal or kilometres of rail track were being stolen from defunct and non-performing routes.

Indian Railways had a turnover of $18,600 million last year. Pakistan Railways could only do $235 million, just over 1 percent of their neighbour. Indian Railways earned $3,750 million profit while Pakistanis couldn’t do even one tenth of that in total revenue and suffered tens of millions of dollars in losses. Here also we need to match India.

Three generals under president Pervez Musharraf were handed over the task of turning round Pakistan Railways but even they couldn’t. Engines burnt in Sindh in the aftermath of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination are still parked in railway yards awaiting repair. In total over 100 locomotives are currently parked in the railway yards in Karachi, Rawalpindi and Lahore, awaiting basic repairs. They require $40 million worth of spare parts.

Our cabinet, instead, sanctioned the purchase of 150 new engines not so long ago at an estimated budget of over $300 million.

The purchase of new engines has been a hot topic in Islamabad since the last three years with both the Americans and Chinese willing to provide over $400 million in credits for 250 new engines. The American and Chinese lobbies in Islamabad are fighting to the hilt to ensure this new business for their respective rail industries. Bidding for this new business has already been shelved a couple of times to strike some balance between these titans.

Pakistan, meanwhile, has virtually shut down its own assembly line for the very same engines gifted by the Japanese in 1994. This national asset is called Risalpur Locomotive Engine Factory. Commissioned at a cost of about $100 million in 1994 by the Japanese to help Pakistan stabilise its dying railways, the Risalpur Factory could only assemble 97 engines during the last 16 years. This factory was designed for 48 engines every year in a single shift. With only 12 percent results, the Japanese who financed this project and helped train our engineers were so disappointed with the direction of Pakistan that they themselves advised the Pakistani government to sell this factory to the private sector, in 2004. But the Railways Ministry kept this wonderful factory since the last 16 years just to ensure that the machinery in this factory rusts irreversibly, while they keep buying new engines.

India, on the other hand, made over 4,000 locomotive engines and more than 42,000 bogies/coaches during the same 16 years. In fact, the Indians are currently making one locomotive engine and 11 coaches every day. Let’s try and understand this whole rail business first. Different spare parts used in a railway engine are made by over 150 companies around the world. Then there are companies that buy these spare parts from different vendors and assemble these parts into a full engine. About 30 commercial assembly plants of these engines exist around the world today.

The heart of a railway engine is the diesel generator. These are all made in the US by General Motors, General Electric and ALCO (three of the largest American firms). Even the Americans assemble these generators from spare parts bought from different vendors. This mobile diesel generator is of around 3MW capacity. Then there are the steel frames, wheels, brakes system and traction motors to enable these power generating diesel engines to pull the weight of the rail cars in which passengers and goods travel. Very simple science.

The approximate cost of spare parts needed to make a railway engine is approximately 35 percent of the cost of a brand new assembled engine. This means any country that has an assembly plant and an efficient system of procuring these spare parts can actually build up to three brand new engines at the cost of one assembled engine. India has one such assembly plant, Pakistan also had one. Job creation, creativity, and the very kick of rolling these engines out from an assembly plant is the cream on top.

The Japanese built the same facility for us at Risalpur but our grand planners in Islamabad didn’t have spare money to run this gifted facility, because they thought it was not a priority area. They perhaps assumed that the same Japanese who helped build this factory will also keep paying for its raw material till Pakistan remains.
 
79,000 Railways employees could lose jobs in coming weeks Bilour demands funds for supply of 400 locomotives

Railways Minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour desperately pleads for funds to save the dying Pakistan Railways. However, the government appears unmoved to help the organisation, which directly feeds about 79,000 employees and well over 90 percent people travel by trains, as they can’t afford the road or air fares.

Instead of finding out ways and means to resuscitate it, the government has ostensibly made up its mind to let it die a slow but sure death. “What else can we do except requesting the government again to release the promised bailout package,” said a senior official of the railways, who preferred not to be named.


“Provide us 400 engines and then if we fail to deliver, I may be subjected to accountability and I shall be ready for the consequences. You expect us to follow the Indians. How can we make railways a profitable entity in the given grim situation? India has invested massively from 1997 to 2005 in the railways and this has enabled it to not only stand on its own feet, but to generate billions of rupees revenue,” he contended.

“We don’t have funds even to pay to the employees working in our factories and other installations,” he said. He noted that the morale of railways employees could be gauged from the fact that they had to resort to agitation for the payment of their monthly salaries. “It is the poor’s mean of travel, but we face discrimination: we have to pay pensions from our own resources, whereas, the rest including the military gets separate allocations for this purpose,” he maintained.
 
how the hell could they ignore such a basic and important entity as the railways???
 

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