Posted on 12/28/2002 1:51:51 PM PST by DTA
December 26, 2002
Trans-Siberian goes fully electric
By Anatoly Medetsky
At a ceremony in a frozen village of the Russian Far East officials on Wednesday celebrated the end of electrification of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, an upgrade hoped to boost competitiveness of the world's longest rail track.
The railroad has been advertising itself as the principal alternative to the sea route across the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal that most businesses now use to ship their containers from Asia to Europe. Russia has been negotiating to extend the route across North Korea to the port of Pusan in South Korea, stating it would make the rail journey even more attractive.
"We need to prove that the Trans-Siberian complies with the requirements to become a competitor to the trans oceanic route," Railways Minister Gennady Fadeyev said at the ceremony in the Ruzhino village. "These requirements are high speed, convenience and security of cargo."
"We today put out a message that the Trans-Siberian Railroad is ready to arrange traffic meeting these requirements," he went on to state.
Symbolically, the first train that went on the fully electrified railroad hauled containers of South Korea's Woojin company that were bound for Western Europe. South Korea accounts for most of transit containers traversing Russia.
The change for electric, rather than diesel, traction will enable locomotives to haul up to twice as much cargo, thus reducing costs, officials said. Alexander Lashin, head of department for transport and communications of the region around Vladivostok, said electrically tracted trains can weigh 6,000 metric tons while diesel locomotives can pull only 3,500-ton trains.
Charts, demonstrated at the Ruzhino ceremony, showed that the cost of using electric locomotives to transport cargo stands at about two thirds of the cost of using diesel locomotives for the same weight of cargo.
Electrification of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, stretching across Russia for over 9,000 kilometers from Smolensk in the west to Vladivostok, started near Moscow in 1929, the Railways Ministry said. The last 175-kilometer leg was electrified near Vladivostok, shaving at least one hour off the transcontinental journey, it added.
Fadeyev said the end of the process was like a "second birth" for the railroad that marked its 100th anniversary last year.
"It's the completion of a huge work that has been carried out by several generations, and it's a truly historic event," he said.
He said most of the eastern portion of the Trans-Siberian uses alternating current of 25 kilowatts and 50 hertz while most of the western portion uses direct current.
At any given time, the Trans-Siberian Railroad handles 1,000 cargo and passenger trains, the Railways Ministry said.
It's actually quite exciting to watch the Russkis' experiment in capitalism unfold.
Got to be a mistake here; 25KW=33.5HP
Yes, one would think it more appropriate to state the VOLTAGE and frequency.
The power consumption (wattage) would be variable dependent on size of the engine (motor) and the load it was pulling.
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