The locomotive manufacturing unit of Indian Railways, Diesel Locomotive Works (DLW) will be producing the first prototype of the WDG5 locomotive by February 2012.
K.B.L. Mittal, General Manager, DLW said:
“The locomotive has an output of 5500 bhp, which makes it the strongest diesel locomotive ever run on the Indian rail network.
“In combination with its record high tractive effort of 560 KN, it can pull significantly more load at higher speeds, thus enabling Indian Railways to increase the system throughput in the rail network.”
The locomotive comes with electronic fuel injection, radial grids and high adhesion light weight fabricated bogies and also incorporates International Union of Railways (UIC) and Association of American Railroads (AAR) crash-worthiness criteria for safety.
It has a state-of-art driver console with modern driver interface and crew friendly features like an air conditioned cab and a toilet, which is first for the Indian Railways fleet.
The high horsepower locomotive design has been done by Research Designs and Standards Organisation (RDSO) and Diesel Locomotive Works, (DLW) of Indian Railways with the support of US based Electro Motive Diesel (EMD).
It has the capability to integrate EMD’s Intellitrain remote diagnostic and monitoring systems to reduce maintenance costs, enhance safety, increase asset utilization, reliability and availability.
DLW is located in Varanasi and manufactures diesel-electric locomotives and spare parts for Indian Railways.
