Indian Railways Floats Tender For Manufacturing 600 Push-Pull Locos At BLW Varanasi

Varanasi, Nov 13 (KNN) The Indian Railways has floated a tender for procurement and maintenance of 600 new electric locomotives for passenger and freight service at an estimated cost of about Rs 15,000 crore.

The high horsepower push-pull locos will be manufactured at Banaras Locomotive Works (BLW) at Varanasi.

The tender has been floated for procuring running passenger trains on Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah routes at 160 kmph and goods trains at 100 kmph with push-pull system.

According to the railways, major rolling stock players are expected to be in race for bagging the project for which the tender is slated to open early next year.

Considered to be a big boost to the BLW, the factory in Varanasi will manufacture 500 push-pull locomotives for freight service and 100 locos for passenger trains. Each loco will have 6,000 horsepower capacity.

The push-pull trains are equipped with higher acceleration and deceleration due to adequate power by two locos.

The push-pull loco is fully electrified and is estimated to cost about Rs 12 crore per loco. The manufacturer of push-pull locos at BLW will have 35 years' maintenance responsibility.

(KNN Bureau)