RailEnquiry

In a unique rail project, the Central Railway is giving a second lease of life to as many as 15 metre-gauge diesel locomotives by converting them to broad-gauge locomotives at Parel workshop in the city. “The 15 YDM-4 class locomotives that once ran on metre-gauge tracks will be converted into WDS-6 class engines for use on the main lines of Mumbai, Pune and other divisions of the Central Railway (CR),” a senior official said.

“A number of old lines that used to metre gauge are now slowly being converted into broad gauge, leaving these locomotives obsolete. The best way would be convert them into main line ones and the Parel workshop has the expertise to get this done,’’ he added.

Established in 1879 for servicing steam locomotives, the Parel workshop has over the years diversified into a workshop carrying out different activities, including diesel loco maintenance etc. In a historic step, the Parel workshop began manufacturing locos in March 2007 and sent the Mumbai-made locomotives to a number of public bodies across the country, including Tata Steel and the Bokaro steel plant and also our very own the Neral Matheran Railway.

The YDM-class locos were originally built from American Loco Company (Alco) between 1961 and 1964 and later made by Diesel Locomotive Works. A number of them were also exported to countries like Tanzania and Vietnam. Since the time the railway board assigned the conversion job (30 locos) to Parel workshop, the latter has converted and tested a few of them as part of a pilot. “Following their success, we are now converting 15 more. This is also a money-saving measure as a new loco costs about Rs6 crore and converting the smaller ones into new ones costs Rs2.5 crore only,” CR spokesperson Ashok Singh said.