New locomotives to replace South Island fleet

Published date20 October 2021
Publication titleWest Coast Messenger, The
Kiwi Rail and Stadler Rail Valencia have signed a binding contract for the delivery of 57 new, state-ofthe-art, locomotives. The locomotives, which will be made in Spain, will begin arriving and enter service in New Zealand between early 2024 and 2026. The contract price for the new fleet is $403 million.

Mr Miller says he is delighted to have signed the contract for the new locomotives, following a robust international procurement process which attracted the world's top four locomotive builders.

"These are the latest-generation locomotives, which will set up Kiwi Rail's South Island freight business for many decades ahead.

"For rail to play its proper role in New Zealand's freight system, we need our services to be on time, every time.

Right now, our 65-strong South Island locomotive fleet has an average age of 47 years. Our machines have been used for 17 years, on average, beyond their economic life. The fact that some of our machines are closer to 60 than to 50 means reliability is a real issue," Mr Miller says.

"Some of our machines have had three complete rebuilds over their lives, at significant expense. And we've still been using 1970s technology in those rebuilds.

"The dual-cab locomotives Stadler Rail are building for us are state of the art. Not only will they meet the European Union world-leading emissions standards and see significant reduction in our fleet's exhaust emissions, they will be fuel efficient and equipped with a range of on board technologies to optimise energy use, including a system that can switch off the engine when the locomotive is idling.

"Each new locomotive will also be significantly more powerful and efficient than our current machines. This means there will be less need to use multiple locomotives to pull heavy trains ¡V reducing fuel use and potentially reducing fleet CO2 emissions by 20 to 25%. It also means Kiwi Rail is future-proofed for the freight growth expected in the decades ahead by having locomotives that can pull larger trains.

"On board diagnostics systems will give us real-time information about the health of our locomotives and enable us to predict when faults could potentially occur, improving overall reliability of the fleet. This is a major advance beyond the 1970s technology we have been using in our South Island fleet.

"Kiwi Rail has worked closely with the Rail and Maritime Transport Union and our locomotive engineers, as we developed the machines' specifications and I would like to thank them for...

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