India to build electric-powered replicas of steam locomotives

03 Feb 2023 CW Team

In India, Southern Railways and Integral Coach Factory (ICF) are building electric replicas of steam locomotives. The replica, created by Southern Railway, is expected to be completed in three to four months, according to The Times of India, with the shell already completed.

A pantograph will be installed on the locomotive to collect power from the overhead cable. In addition, ICF will soon begin designing a locomotive with a steam engine theme based on the Vande Bharat design. The Avadi EMU car shed builds a heritage engine on the EMU platform.

Southern Railway divisional railway manager Ganesh stated, “A major disadvantage of steam locomotives is that due to the capacity of coal, they can only travel at limited speed and distance.”

Southern Railway tested the locomotive on a commercial run a few years ago, leading to the decision to build new locomotives with a similar design to the steam locomotive EIR 21 from Egmore to Kodambakkam to allow the special heritage train to travel further and faster.

Furthermore, in August of last year, ICF announced that it would manufacture metro rail coaches for the Maharashtra Metro Rail Corporation (Maha Metro) in order to carry out metro rail projects in Nagpur and Pune.

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