Russia to adopt heavy freight train development program by Oct
MOSCOW. July 12 (Interfax) - Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has instructed the transport, industry and trade, and economic development ministries, Russian Railways (RZD) and other interested companies to develop and approve a program for the development of heavy train freight shipping in Russia by October 3.
The orders were issued following a June 28 meeting of the Russian president's council for modernization of the economy and innovation, which was devoted to the development of rail transport, the government press service said.
The Education and Science Ministry, Transport Ministry and Finance Ministry, together with RZD and industry post secondary institutions, are supposed to draft amendments to government acts by August 15 to make training of specialists in high-speed and heavy-haul rail transport a priority area. This could result in an increase in funding for the educational institutions.
Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said earlier that organizing heavy-haul rail shipments between the coal-rich Kuznetsk Basin and ports in Russia's Northwest, on the Black Sea and in the Far East is a priority for the development of railroad infrastructure in Russia. The main types of freight shipped for export on these routes are coal and ore. Sokolov said the country needs to eliminate infrastructure bottlenecks at approaches to ports and border crossings, ensure throughput capacity on main lines, and develop major rail hubs such as Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, among others.
Business daily Vedomosti reported on Wednesday that RZD and the Transport Ministry had already agreed on a heavy-haul project, while Deputy Transport Minister Andrei Tsydenov sent the government a proposal on April 30 to put heavy trains (up to 9,000 tonnes, with cars with axle load of 27 tonnes) on certain routes. The development of heavy train traffic would increase the shipping capacity of the country's main rail routes, he said.
Tsydenov also said that heavy trains could be operated on "coal-ore routes" from the Kuznetsk Basin to ports in the Azov-Black Sea, Arctic and Far East basins, as well as on the Taishet-Sovetskaya Gavan line to the Vanino Port. However, he did not say when the first heavy trains might be run on these routes.
Using heavy trains will require updating the fleet of locomotives and modernizing infrastructure, Tsydenov said. In his letter, he described two ways of increasing train weight, by increasing the axle load of freight cars and increasing the number of cars per train. The former could raise train weight by 8%, by reduce speed by 10-12%.
Increasing axle load "is an important incentive for owners to transition to a new generation railcar fleet," Tsydenov said. So far only the ICT Group's Tikhvin Railcar Plant and OJSC Uralvagonzavod (UVZ) have plans to build cars with such axle load. The government is now considering giving operators discounts on the purchase of freight cars with higher capacity.
By lengthening trains it is possible to increase their weight by 50% and this would not require investment in modernizing infrastructure, Tsydenov said.