Engineering Post Report
Pakistan Railways is procuring large number of 820 wagons from China in order to meet its requirements and modernise its fleet.
Railways have started receiving the wagons in a phased manner as first batch of completely built units (CBU) of 70 high capacity wagons have recently arrived at Karachi Port. These wagons were dispatched by the Chinese firm on December 25,2022.
According to the Railways sources, these are the flat wagons on which containers would be kept and used for the transportation of various goods to various parts of the country from Lahore, Karachi and other major stations.
Under the contract, the Chinese firm is also to manufacture 200 CBUs including 70 flat, 70 open top and 40covered wagons and 20 brake vans.
Under the contract, Railways is procuring as many as 800 high capacity wagons and 20 brake vans,600 wagons are to be manufactured within the country at Pakistan Railways carriage factories in collaboration with the Chinese engineers.
Earlier on, the arrival of 46 high-speed modern coaches from China in the last week of November 2022 had paved the way for the provision of state of the art travelling facilities to the passengers across the country. The sources said that furthermore, arrangements are already in place for manufacturing locally 104 similar coaches ( passenger, luggage and brake vans) under the technology transfer component of 230 coaches purchase agreement.
As already reported by Engineering Post, since the test run of these coaches has already been completed, Railways is using these in various express trains on the main line . Modern train coaches and wagons can run at speeds of 160 kilometer per hour (KMH) and 80 KM per hour respectively.
