Alstom Announces Locomotive Delivery Date

At the end of June in Astana, the first freight contract for Alstom on the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway (BTK) was presented and it has now been reported that the locomotives will be shipped from Kazakhstan in September. However, the first Alstom passenger locomotive for BTK is already in Baku.

Alstom presented its first Prima T8 AZ8A cargo electric locomotive at the electric locomotive plant EKZ, and in 2014, the first AZ8A locomotive became part of the contract signed by the EKZ with Azerbaijan Railways providing 50 locomotives.

The locomotive is designed in accordance with specific technical requirements and also complies with GOST and TU. The head of CJSC Javid Gurbanov, stated that passenger transportation on the BTK line will begin in 2019; however, it will only start after receiving passenger trains ordered from Stadler.

Built on the basis of the Azerbaijani-Georgian-Turkish interstate agreement, the BTK's initial volume of cargo transportation is estimated at 6.5 million tons, with an estimated 1 million passengers to be transported annually.

By Shawn Wayne