Costs related to locomotive refurbishment weighs the operator’s financial situation

The East-European market is still focusing on locomotive refurbishment or on the acquisition of second hand locomotives whose purchase costs are much lower, but which damage investment budgets in time with 60% higher maintenance costs, more expensive spare parts and higher energy consumption. The general tendency should be towards the procurement of new locomotives and not their refurbishment, but insufficient funds is most of the times the decisive factor.

At the counter pole, in Western Europe, Rail passenger transport operators are generally preferring new vehicles instead of refurbishing the old ones. This is the conclusion drawn after a bird’s eye view on the markets in the past 10 to 15 years. Western private rail operators began their activity 15 years ago based on refurbished second-hand vehicles, but, at the moment, almost all successful operators in Western Europe are using new vehicles as, otherwise, they could not face the competition of state-owned companies. Moreover, most of state-owned rail companies in Western Europe have upgraded their fleet of vehicles in the past 20 years.
Experts in the area believe that the decision to choose between refurbishment and the acquisition of new locomotives should be mainly made by identifying the objectives to be achieved through modernisation, such as cutting down operation and maintenance costs, increasing capacity and performance, intensifying reliability and availability and criteria related to aesthetics, environment protection and safety. Certain solutions related to rolling stock performance and cost reduction could be achieved through buying new equipments, such as for example energy saving costs, longer maintenance and safety periods. Nevertheless, if railway operators don’t have enough equity to purchase new locomotives, the refurbishment alternative becomes viable by installing a new engine and eliminating obsolete composite materials that generate polluting emissions. The advantage in this case consists in getting a practically “new” products at much lower costs.
A simple analysis of the locomotive market dedicated to rail passenger transport shows that, in Western Europe, most orders to rail industry manufacturers are for new locomotives, while in South and South-Eastern Europe, there are more orders for locomotive refurbishment than for procurement of new locomotives. The Eastern market is still focusing on locomotive refurbishment or on the acquisition of second hand locomotives whose purchase costs are much lower, but which damage investment budgets in time with 60% higher maintenance costs, more expensive spare parts and higher energy consumption. Although the price paid for refurbishment is visibly inferior to that paid for new locomotives, the costs that could arise several years after the refurbishment process are much higher than if investments had been made in new vehicles. Costs related to the maintenance of refurbished or second-hand locomotives are exaggerated and would only burden the operator’s financial situation.

[ by Elena Ilie ]
Share on:
Facebooktwitterlinkedinmail

 

RECOMMENDED EVENT: