Russian Railways supplier resolved the problem with locomotives after a complaint to the Ministry of Industry and Trade – RBK

Transmashholding resolved the problem with locomotives after the complaint of the head of Russian Railways

Transmashholding has modernized the locomotives operating at the Eastern Range. This happened after the complaint of the general director of Russian Railways Oleg Belozerov to the Ministry of Industry and Trade about malfunctions that caused many hours of interruptions in the movement of trains.

Russian Railways (RZD) no longer has any claims to the quality of Transmashholding’s locomotives for the transportation of goods along the BAM and Transsib (both lines are included in the Eastern range). In the second half of 2021, the monopoly “managed to remove the main issues related to failures on new locomotives serving the Eastern proving ground,” a representative of Russian Railways told RBC.

According to him, this was achieved through the modernization of locomotive units. Electric locomotives 3ES5K “Ermak” are now “within the technical specifications for the coefficient of readiness for operation.” This makes it possible to ensure the driving of heavy freight trains on the Trans-Siberian Railway with a mass of 7.1 thousand tons, the representative of the Russian Railways noted. The transportation of trains with such a weight (versus the traditional 6,300 tons) is necessary to ensure the growing transportation of coal.

RBC sent a request to the press service of Transmashholding.

In May 2021, the general director of Russian Railways Oleg Belozerov wrote a letter to the head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov, in which he complained about the design flaws of Transmashholding locomotives and the difficulties of using them at the Eastern range. Then Belozerov warned of the risks of violating the delivery time of goods, if the reliability of the equipment is not increased. He criticized, first of all, diesel locomotives of the 2TE25A Vityaz, 2TE25KM and 3TE25K2M series, pointing out that during the operation of these machines at the BAM, “massive” cases of traction electric motor malfunctions were recorded, which caused many hours of interruptions in the movement of trains. Diesel locomotives are now also modernized, added a representative of Russian Railways.