Experts in the area believe that the decision to choose between locomotive refurbishment and acquisition of new vehicles has to be first of all made by identifying the objectives that need to be achieved through modernisation, such as reduction of operation and maintenance costs, increase of capacity and performance, intensifying reliability and availability and environmental protection and safety aspects.
In Western Europe, most operators prefer new vehicles against refurbished ones. This is the conclusion of a market overview in the past 10-15 years. Western private rail operators began their activity 15 years ago relying on old, refurbished vehicles, but at the moment, almost all successful operators in Western Europe use new vehicles to be able to face the competition of state operators.
“In order to have a good maintenance plan, not only in terms of availability and reliability but also in economic terms, it is very important to keep the fleet of locomotives as upgraded as possible. Having new or updated equipments and components will make possible the utilisation of the most recent maintenance technical solutions and will have a direct impact in the efficiency of the maintenance procedures, apart of the obvious improvement of the locomotive technical performance”, believes Aitor Llorente, International Division Area Manager of the Spanish manufacturer CAF.
On the other hand, GE Transportation believes strongly in the process of taking older diesel electric locomotives and “giving them a new lease on life”. GE Transportation upgraded more than 1,100 locomotives, most of them in Russia, Kazakhstan, Poland, Mongolia and Syria. “We had to stop modernising locomotives in the EU countries in December 2010. This was driven by the applicable emissions regulations, and GE doesn’t have a suitable engine that met the current EU3A emissions compliant engine that could be applied to the old locomotives. We believe an upgraded locomotive has to have a new life expectancy of 15-20 years and provide significant advantages, such as low fuel consumption and, if possible, an improved traction power and benefit from modern control with microprocessors for improved performance and reliability”, declared Krikor Aghajanian, Manager European Sales, GE Transportation.
Providing the spare parts and their maintenance for a freight locomotive in operation is also a measure that operators have to take into account.
“The main priority of maintenance depots is to assure rolling stock availabi-lity and reliability, and a bad spare parts logistics strategy will have an adverse effect. Management of spares tries to reduce stock volumes in order to reduce financial and logistics stocks, but never compromising availability, because the lack of spares at workshop’s warehouse will prevent the use of the vehicle, until the arrival of the expected part, causing financial losses to the operator company, added Aitor Llorente.
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