Pakistan Railways (PR) is set to receive first shipment of high-powered diesel locomotives from United States (US) on January 20, a PR official said here on Tuesday. "Seven out of the total 55 locomotives (4,000 horse-powered) will reach Karachi in next Friday night while the remaining 48 would also be imported till the end of this year," he added.
The locomotives had been manufactured by General Electric (GE) US and would be operated to transport coal from Karachi to Sahiwal Coal Power project, he said.
A four-member delegation of GE also met with Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Pakistan Railways Javaid Anwar at his office in Lahore.
PR had sighed agreement with GE to procure these 55 engines in June 2015 against some $ 214 million.
Federal Railways' Minister Khwaja Saad Rafique in his recent visit to Karachi told reporters that PR would start operating a train service to transport imported coal from Port Qasim to Sahiwal wherein a coal-based power project was underway. He said initially, PR would operate a single train attached with some 40 bogies daily; however the target was to run five trains each day.
With the coal transportation, he hoped that PR would be able to gain Rs 6 billion of annual profit as the public entity had already set a target of Rs 40 billion income till the end of June 2017.
The minister said PR needed at least 1,000 locomotives and $12 billion to transform train service of the country.
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