Wabtec making components at Marhowra unit; eyes digital, signalling orders

Has started making auxiliary power units and radiators as part of localisation drive. The APUs were earlier imported from Germany

Wabtec company GE Transportation has expanded the scope of works at its locomotive factory at Marhowra in Bihar. The unit, built to cater to a contract for supplying 1,000 locomotives to the Indian Railway over 10 years, is now making components  as part of localisation efforts at the facility itself besides catering to and pursuing railway contracts in digital and signalling.

“Once we stabilised locomotive manufacturing, we started to invest in component manufacturing. At the Marhowra project, we have started manufacturing auxiliary power units (APU) which were originally imported from Germany and radiators. These will have global competence as we move forward,” Sandeep Selot, managing director and chief commercial officer, South Asia & South East Asia, Wabtec Freight, told Business Standard in an interview. The company has a joint venture with the Indian Railways called GE Diesel Locomotive Pvt Ltd that runs the Marhowra project.

The company has achieved 65 per cent localization with 60 local and 10 global suppliers. Besides, once operational, the locomotives are real time monitored at Roza in Uttar Pradesh. Selot said the locomotive was just one pillar but the company was entering digital space alongside. “We intend to bring further technology for online monitoring of rolling stock,” he said, adding that the company was executing a contract with the Indian Railways for wagon monitoring and have supplied close to 25 systems.

 

The company is separately executing a pilot for “end of train telemetry” which involves running trains without guards. It also plans to work on new initiatives with the Railways IR for modernizing of signaling systems.

Selot said one of the things the company did when it got the railway contract was to set up a global hub for engineering in India. There are now 1,200 engineers who are based out of Hyderabad and Bangalore who not just work on India projects but are associated with projects across the world.

With locomotives as a whole being manufactured at Marowha, the company is able to turn around one locomotive in three days.

Selot said the intent of the Roza unit is to reduce the dwell time so that the availability of the fleet is close to 95 per cent. “In the last two-three years, we have demonstrated this and today the shed has completed homing of 250 locomotives as was planned.” A second shed at Gandhidham in Gujarat has started functioning. “We are partnering here with the Indian Railways and replicating best practices we achieved in Roza. It will become a role model for PPP services,” he added.

 

Under the contract, the company had to supply 100 locomotives every year from 2018-19 and is now left with 750 locomotives to be supplied over the next seven to eight years. According to Selot, these locomotives are fuel efficient, emission compliant and digitally enabled. The Railways have defined the operating route for these locomotives as the northern and western part of the country and are doing heavy haul and double stack container operations. “These locomotives provide a great functionality of being available 95 per cent of the time and ensure that loco pilots have a good environment to operate. Pilots have air-conditioned cabins, heated windshields and noise agonistic insulation. It has brought change in the life of loco pilots as well,” he added.

Five years after the contract for the project was signed and two years after the start of delivery in October 2018, the project faced many challenges including a no-diesel stand by Union railway minister Piyush Goyal. Selot, however, said that the project was a challenging one but “it was a great partnership with the Indian Railways and the Bihar government to get over construction bottlenecks, farmer compensation, building infrastructure to get equipment”.