BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 29
By Sadraddin Aghjayev – Trend:
Locomotives of the French Alstom company will play a key role in boosting the freight transportation capacity within Azerbaijan, a source in the company told Trend.
According to the source, the first 7 freight locomotives, being among the most powerful electric locomotives in the world were commissioned in Azerbaijan, contributing to regional railway interconnection.
“These locomotives will run on the main freight line, which has recently been converted from 3 kV DC to 25 kV AC,” the source added.
Managing Director of Alstom in Western and Central Asia Guillaume Tritter said that despite the serious challenges imposed by the pandemic [COVID-19 pandemic] the locomotives passed all necessary validation tests and are ready to be commissioned.
“It's a significant milestone of this key project that we are developing jointly with our partner ADY. Since this project is being implemented in the strategic location, at the crossroad of the Silk Roads, it will contribute to developing the railway infrastructure of the whole region,” Tritter noted. “Our locomotives play a key role in boosting the freight transportation capacity within Azerbaijan. We are very enthusiastic and we are looking forward to developing further our strong partnership with ADY [Azerbaijan Railways CJSC].”
He stressed that Prima T8 AZ8A locomotives will be running on the ‘Silk Road’ East-West corridor of Azerbaijan linking the Caspian Sea’s main ports to the Georgian border and later all across the country.
In 2014, ADY signed a contract with Alstom for €288 million for supplying 50 electric locomotives, including 40 Prima T8 AZ8A heavy freight locomotives which are being produced at Alstom’s JV EKZ in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan and 10 Prima M4 AZ4A passenger locomotives which have been produced in Belfort, France and already delivered to Azerbaijan.
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