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| New Kenya railway tracks are ready for locomotives from Souh Africa. |
TRANSNET Engineering planned to unveil its first locally
manufactured diesel-powered locomotive at the Africa Rail Conference and
Exhibition in the Sandton Convention Centre.
While many bemoan the rusting railway tracks all over South Africa,
the fact remains that the Transnet Engineering’s Locomotive Business is fully
able to take on work from other African countries.
This decision currently refurbishes, converts, upgrades or
remanufactures over 400 locomotives annually to ISO 9001 quality standards at
its factories in Durban, Bloemfontein and Pretoria. It also maintains over 2 500
of the locomotives in South Africa’s fleet to provide its customers with a
source of reliable and available tractive effort.
General overhauls and Minor Overhaul Programmes (MOPs) of DC-type
locomotives are undertaken in Pretoria at Transnet Engineering’s Koedoespoort
works.
Should a locomotive be severely damaged in some way, a total
rebuild of diesel electric locomotives is undertaken at Transnet Engineering’s
plant in Bloemfontein and the rebuild of electric DC locomotives is done in
their Koedoespoort plant with the rebuild of the electric AC locomotives in
their Durban-based plant.
Meanwhile, Bombardier Transportation showed its successful Gautrain
and Traxx Africa Locomotive projects, integrated solutions and Rail Control and
service and maintenance solutions. The company, which also supplied the
Gautrain, is in the last year of a three-year project by a consortium of
companies under the Bombardier Africa Alliance to modernise signalling along
over 200 km of track in eThekwini to speed up the commute of some 70 000
passengers. By year end, the consortium anticipate it will have replaced
Durban’s 40-year-old signalling technology with new systems that will allow
trains to run 150 seconds apart.
Bombardier is also a leader in electric transport both on rail and
roads, and will also soon be opening its first Propulsion and Controls
manufacturing facility in Johannesburg.
