The "Cape of Good Hope" has again opened the gates of mutual growth
and prosperity for Indian Railways as well as African countries which
have placed huge orders for supply of diesel engines from India.

Apart from fulfiling the requirements for locomotives by the rapidly
expanding railways here, Diesel Locomotive Works (DLW) at Varanasi,
which began manufacturing locomotives in 1961 with the help of some
American companies and is presently making five different types of
diesel engines, is committed to supply these to a number of African
and other countries.

From making just four locomotives in the first year of its production,
it produced 222 locomotives in 2007-08. Railways' current annual
demand for diesel locomotives is about 400.

DLW has already supplied locomotives to Mozambique, Angola, Male,
Senegal and Sudan, apart from countries like Vietnam, Bangladesh, Sri
Lanka, Myanmar and Malaysia.

"We only make the locomotives. Export of these is carried out through
RITES and IRCON," chief mechanical engineer Neeraj Kumar told TOI on
Wednesday. To meet the growing demand from world over as well as the
need by India's own Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) project, railways
has set up another locomotive manufacturing unit at Marora in railway
minister Lalu Prasad's constituency in Chapra (Bihar).

Here, powerful diesel engines for heavy haulage of 6,000 horse power
will be manufactured. A separate unit was necessitated by the fact
that newer machines will be installed for making more powerful engines
which would move at faster speed as well. Contrary to the popular view
that diesel engines are not cost effective due to oil price hike,
experts pointed out that barring European countries, diesel
locomotives were the mainstay of (bigger) railways in the US,
Australia, Africa, China and the Arab world.
"Besides, our diesel locomotives are powerhouses on wheels. One diesel
engine has the capacity to generate 2 mw electricity annually. And we
have 5,000 diesel locomotives. Thus, they have the installed capacity
of 10,000 mw and this power is used for running passenger and freight
trains, their fans, ACs etc. This spares the national grid of 10,000
mw of electricity which goes to electrify villages, towns and
industries, instead of running trains," said Kumar.

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