Caterpillar to provide 60 Diesal Electrc Locomotives for Pakistan Railways

[Kloitra]

9h are elcrto n diesel
wag 9 got tow variant

and we are comparing it with Chinese. .. yea I agre catapilar are one of the best.. but I was comparing with chines ge

So I did missed something!

 

[indian_foxhound]

So I did missed something!

koi nai bhai... hota hai...

 

[Dannytoro]

The figures seem odd for the costs. According to the original article, that works out to over $33 billion per locomotive USD. A typical rebuilt American built Loco runs around $10 million for a Tier 2-3 emissions engined machine. Could the original figure be for everything including infrastructure, maintenance and fuel maybe? Even then it seems high.

 

[HariPrasad]

Government to buy 58 diesel locomotives from American company
July 12, 2013

Reference:
Government to buy 58 diesel locomotives from American company | Business Recorder

Pakistan will import 58 diesel electric locomotives, costing Rs 19.40 billion from an American company under a new deal to improve Pakistan Railways performance, well placed sources told Business Recorder. The government has placed an order with the American company, Caterpillar, to supply 58 locomotives, sources said, adding that the delivery would start in November 2013 and would complete by June 2014.

November to May , 7 Months Railways will have 60 additional engines

Contract was not signed under PML N government but previous government
Ideally we are still waiting for orders for locomotives under PML N government

It would be a great move if additional 50 engines are ordered under PML N league government on urgent basis

Good Decision. Good that you didn't buy that crap once again which has cripple your Railway. This will be a great boost to the Pakistan Railway.

 

[Dannytoro]

Why would it be a bad decision and why would it cripple the railroad? The price quoted has to be bogus. But the trains lying around un-serviceable are Chinese built rip offs of the Export Type 66 design. Not American style locomotives. The Chinese built locomotives will not meet FRA standards for safety and quality. Now they are looking to buy South Korea's former diesel fleet. Which is not necessarily bad depending on the price. I'm all for local built locomotives, but your shop has limited production capability compared with a massive system. Maybe they should open up a new shop and license to produce a modern design that fit's your system.

Actually I do think an American locomotive is not well advised. They probably exceed the local rail gauge capacity per axle. American and EU mainline locomotives pretty much all run on very stable 125-150 pound track. Lighter track like is common overseas tends to be less then 100 pound rail. You would not want to run an SD70AC1E on your track. It's too heavy. And probably would damage your track due to excess tractive effort.

 

[forcetrip]

Why would it be a bad decision and why would it cripple the railroad? The price quoted has to be bogus. But the trains lying around un-serviceable are Chinese built rip offs of the Export Type 66 design. Not American style locomotives. The Chinese built locomotives will not meet FRA standards for safety and quality. Now they are looking to buy South Korea's former diesel fleet. Which is not necessarily bad depending on the price. I'm all for local built locomotives, but your shop has limited production capability compared with a massive system. Maybe they should open up a new shop and license to produce a modern design that fit's your system.

Actually I do think an American locomotive is not well advised. They probably exceed the local rail gauge capacity per axle. American and EU mainline locomotives pretty much all run on very stable 125-150 pound track. Lighter track like is common overseas tends to be less then 100 pound rail. You would not want to run an SD70AC1E on your track. It's too heavy. And probably would damage your track due to excess tractive effort.

You know a lot about trains and track. Care to elaborate on what you do for a living? Didn't see any post in the introduction section.

 

[Chak Bamu]

Why would it be a bad decision and why would it cripple the railroad? The price quoted has to be bogus. But the trains lying around un-serviceable are Chinese built rip offs of the Export Type 66 design. Not American style locomotives. The Chinese built locomotives will not meet FRA standards for safety and quality. Now they are looking to buy South Korea's former diesel fleet. Which is not necessarily bad depending on the price. I'm all for local built locomotives, but your shop has limited production capability compared with a massive system. Maybe they should open up a new shop and license to produce a modern design that fit's your system.

Actually I do think an American locomotive is not well advised. They probably exceed the local rail gauge capacity per axle. American and EU mainline locomotives pretty much all run on very stable 125-150 pound track. Lighter track like is common overseas tends to be less then 100 pound rail. You would not want to run an SD70AC1E on your track. It's too heavy. And probably would damage your track due to excess tractive effort.

He probably meant the Chinese locomotives.

 

[SBD-3]

1. 20 Billion is a huge sum of money, we could have gotten the same quality/quantity at half price

From where? are you in the business of importing locomotives?

2. Why is this being announced now? Why didn't PPP's government announce this during election campaigns?

Perhaps because the deal was not materialized and railways in general was in dire ruins at that time.

 

[Dannytoro]

You know a lot about trains and track. Care to elaborate on what you do for a living? Didn't see any post in the introduction section.

Well thanks. But I have just been studying Railroad operations closely while considering building a railroad in Canada. I have been looking at both marine shipping and aviation as well. With the aim to improve shipping costs by savings where possible. And by alternative means not being done now. Rail is probably the toughest option. And will take decades to accomplish, but will have the most long term benefit locally. Given the situation in Laborador, it would be of most benefit to open up a local foundary and produce rail and track components locally. We have large, high quality iron deposits in many places. And we have exceptional resources to generate power with peat, natural gas, tidal power and oil. In our case we will be importing locomotives and only having maintenance facilities.

Luckily for us we will not need the number of locomotives Pakistan requires. Passenger traffic will be light, and will most likely be done with DMU units for mail and passengers, though we will be a bit different and have couchette car and buffet cars. Innu and Inuit and Metis families are often large and can be offered more economic and comfortable travel in family units. So A DMU set will probably have a Coach, Standard Sleeper, a pair of Couchettes and a Buffet car, as well as a package/mail car.

Mining is what will pay the bills. There are dozens of large mines now, with hundreds forecast over the next few decades. Since we can see large demand, yet semi-seasonal time frames, we will need some very powerful locomotives. Yet they must also deliver to port areas with limited space. I have been looking at some of the very successful locomotives exported to Australia and Brazil. Though we will use standard gauge. Both countries use some very nice compact but powerful locomotives.

In truth we will opt for a mix of rebuilds and new units. There is a surplus of big strapping locomotives like the SD70AC1E to rebuild, even SD90's if needed. SD90's can be bought for rebuild for $400,000 right now. I would definitely get some of these. The other mainline units will be new build units like Australia and Brazil use. For general purpose work. And road switchers can be done with rebuild units. There are so many of these around they are just being scrapped. I would opt for a multi-engine gen-set like Brookville locomotive is building/rebuilding. Which only burn fuel as needed and starts up the next engine as needed.

 

[Dannytoro]

He probably meant the Chinese locomotives.

Yes, the Loco's in question are a Chinese version of an EMD export design. The type 66/JT42 series:

This is a very hard design to build properly. I suspect the Chinese resorted to Aluminum wire on these. The problem with the Type 66 is that it was designed to be a lighter narrow gauge unit. It's only a Bo-Bo unit. It might be ok pulling light passenger cars or shunting cars, but a mainline locomotive it's not. I suspect they are not up to the task most users are forced to put them in. If heavy abusive hauling is involved, move up to a JT56 series, or better yet, look at the SD22/30's that have been built up to tough little bulldog standards by Brazil and Australia. Those units spend decades in tough mining operations with long heavy hauls. They are more powerful and have stiffer more rigid frames to survive the tough work.

 

[Dannytoro]

Perhaps because the deal was not materialized and railways in general was in dire ruins at that time.

Which is always ashamed. Like all other types of public infrastructure, rail is always vulnerable to being let down. I do not get this "deal" at all. They could easily go to American Builders like Brookville, Wabco, Progress Rail or Coville and bought a few nice modern tailor made Locomotives with a production license to build them in Pakistan. Even in knock down form to train the new factory workers. So both the rail operators learn on a few new locomotive nice and slow. And the factory workers get highly skilled building in steps. Everybody wins.

Plus right now the rail industry in the USA is in a lot of flux. Caterpillar bought out EMD and Progress. The wonderful and tough EMD 710 engine will most likely be retired way before it's time as Caterpillar directs customers into their engines. Which is dead ashamed as the 710 engine series is a product of over 50 of hard railroad service. They have not come out and said it. But when folks ask for engines meeting Tier 3/4 engines, they all go quiet and look like deer in the headlights. And you get steered to a Cat 175 or 3612 series engine. Which are legendary engines in the mining industry, but not that of railroads. Before being bought out, EMD was publicly touting how the 710 was beating all other engines in stepping up to stage 4 emission standards. But Caterpiller will claim that never happened to pawn off their products instead.

The problem with countries is that they rarely buy the rail products that make sense for their country. Like if your country has little oil, then going Diesel makes no sense. You should stick with coal or go electric. Buy Locomotive that work well on the rail lines you have. It's amazing how often that does not happen. Like the High speed rail craze in the USA. It does not fit or work with what we have. Yet the demand of inter-city on existing rail is there and increasing. Yet our government basically ignores it to push Highspeed rail. Even though they know it would take some pressure off our aviation system.

 

[takeiteasy]

The problem with countries is that they rarely buy the rail products that make sense for their country. Like if your country has little oil, then going Diesel makes no sense. You should stick with coal or go electric. Buy Locomotive that work well on the rail lines you have.

is their newer coal based tech for locos? Diesel engines makes perfect sense since countries like Pakistan may be getting petroleum products at subsidized rates unlike rest of the world.

 

[forcetrip]

@Dannytoro

Thank you for sharing your valuable insight. Well described and easy to understand. The main problem is having cash to put together a viable network. No cash also means no companies interested except the same few that give out loans.

 

[livingdead]

@Dannytoro (from toronto?) .. thanks for your input..
I know nothing about railways but they are magical for me for some reason.... and I play railroad games for hours... lolz

 

[Dannytoro]

is their newer coal based tech for locos? Diesel engines makes perfect sense since countries like Pakistan may be getting petroleum products at subsidized rates unlike rest of the world.

There is no new coal train technology I'm aware of. You have ideas based on super efficient boiler turbines. But most use oil. Though coal could be used just as easily. They even built one using an SD-40-2 diesel electric frame. There was not much interest. There was also the Coal Dust burning turbines which were very powerful, but proved to be maintenance nightmares.

Yes if you have oil, definitely use it. The newest trend here will be Natural Gas. Which we have a lot of. Even now you can bulk buy Natgas at $2.01 USD a gallon. Lat year Diesel fuel cost railroads $3.29 per gallon USD based on massive volumes. So you can see a vast interest here. They will have to perfect the right amount of Diesel Fuel needed to burn with the Natgas first. You will still need that for lubrication purposes. But if they can run on 80 percent Natgas and 20% Diesel the savings are huge.

@Dannytoro (from toronto?) .. thanks for your input..
I know nothing about railways but they are magical for me for some reason.... and I play railroad games for hours... lolz

No, that's just a nickname I picked up from years ago when I raced a 1968 Oldsmobile Tornado. I'm a fascinated by them too.