The Indian Railways will export 18 modern diesel locomotives to Myanmar soon.The engines worth about Rs 200 crore are manufactured at the Diesel Locomotive Works (DLW) in Varanasi.The first lot of six locomotives are ready to be shipped next month, while the rest will be delivered by December this year.
A high-level team of Myanmar Railways led by the chief of its mechanical and electrical department had recently inspected the locomotives that are equipped with latest features.The state-of-the-art DLW has been exporting locos to many countries, including Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Malaysia.The export orders are executed by RITES, the export arm of the Indian Railways.
RITES has exported over 60 locomotives, besides various other rolling stock and machinery, to Myanmar in the past 18 years.The DLW-build locomotives are preferred in Mynamar due to their good hauling capacity and easy maintenance, said a senior RITES official.
These locos will be operational with better optimisation of power transfer to wheel.The locos have many other features such as roof-mounted dynamic brake grids, panel-mounted brake system, fabricated bogies, and higher rating traction motors with speed sensing mechanism.