Azerbaijan to purchase thousands of freight cars
By Rashid Shirinov
Azerbaijan Railways plan to purchase 2,900 new freight cars by 2020.
The head of the transportation department at Azerbaijan Railways, Bashir Asadov, announced about this while talking to Trend on June 2.
The procurement of freight cars will be realized in the framework of the state program, which is being drafted.
Recently, the work on reconstruction of 15 rail tank cars was completed. This made possible to increase the service life of the cars by five years. The life of tank wagons for transportation of oil and oil products is set at 32 years. These tanks have been in operation since 1984, and their service life has expired, but Inter Qaz Servis company have achieved their reconstruction.
Asadov claimed that the cost of a new car is $50,000. However, the reconstruction of one car costs only $5,500.
“We have all the necessary capabilities to extend their operation for 10 years, which will allow us to save huge amounts of money,” he said, adding that reconstruction of 500 rail cars is expected in the future.
Asadov further added that Azerbaijan Railways purchased 3,100 freight cars of different types over the past two years from the Russian research and production corporation Uralvagonzavod.
Some 600 of these cars are intended for transportation of oil and oil products. The delivered lot consisted of 400 closed railcars, 400 flat cars, 200 cars for transportation of large containers, 1,000 gondola cars, 600 tanks, 300 grain carriers, 100 hoppers and 100 cement carriers.
The contract on the acquisition of cars was signed between Azerbaijan Railways and Uralvagonzavod, in March 2015. The first lot was delivered to Azerbaijan in April 25, 2015.
Recently, Javid Gurbanov, Chairman of Azerbaijani Railways stated that in spite of recession in current rail freight transportation in the country, Azerbaijan Railways do everything possible to increase the volume of cargo, and its amount will exceed 25 million tons a year by 2025.
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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov
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