The three-phase electric locomotives purchased by the Railways from Swedish-Swiss multinational Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) have run into performance problems. The locomotives had been bought in 1995-96 when C K Jaffer Sharief was railway minister. Kickbacks had been alleged in the deal.
One of the 6,000 horse power ezch locomotives has been found to have developed a crack in one of its wheels. While the wheel has been replaced by the ABB, the defective components have been sent to its workshop at Manchester for a detailed probe into the cause of the fault.
Engineers from the ABB and the Railways are, meanwhile, conducting separate spot investigations to ascertain whether the crack had developed on account of a design fault, a manufacturing defect, or, was due to metallurgical reasons.
Some of the engines, which have been hauling passenger trains, have also run up mechanical problems. They been found to be of the type termed as 'cow catchers' which essentially means that they are liable to be damaged if they happen to run into a cow, or other cattle, on the railway track.
The coupling membranes of the locomotives hauling passenger traffic have also been found to be prone to frequent failure while the engines have been found to have been beset with leakage problems.
The orders for the 30 state-of-the-art freight and passenger locomotives had been placed in July 1993, triggering a spate of allegations of heavy kickbacks in the deal. The Railways, however, chose to ignore the charges. The supply of the passenger engines commenced in October 1995 and that of the freight engines in September 1996.
While 10-11 of the state-of-the-art locomotives have been pressed into service to haul freight, the rest have been used to pull passenger trains on four important Rajdhani express routes
