Ukrzaliznytsia plans to purchase 40 diesel locomotives of the American company Wabtec, some of which will serve the Odessa railway.
According to Sergei Pavlov, director of the locomotive economy department at Ukrzaliznytsia, the company plans to purchase 40 new mainline diesel locomotives. Interestingly, even a specific locomotive manufacturer was named: the US company Wabtec.
Also, the representative of "Ukrzaliznytsia" said that due to this future purchase, the need for main-line diesel locomotives on the Ukrainian railways will be completely covered. At the same time, part of the new diesel locomotives will be transferred to the Odessa and Pridneprovskaya railways, where they will serve directions to the ports of Izmail (Odessa region), Nikolaiev, Kherson, Berdyansk, Mariupol. And those diesel locomotives that are now operating in these directions will be transferred to other lines without electrification.
Wabtec merged with GE Transportation in 2019. Prior to that, it has existed since 1999 due to the merger of Westinghouse Air Brake Company (WABCO) and MotivePower Industries Corporation. Wabtec manufactures mainline and shunting diesel locomotives up to 4000 hp, manufactures products for locomotives, freight cars and passenger vehicles, and builds new locomotives with a capacity of up to 4000 horsepower (3 MW).
Given this business structure, diesel locomotives from Wabtec can be technically identical or very similar to those 30 General Electric locomotives currently operated by Ukrzaliznytsia.
Ukrzaliznytsia has over 700 mainline diesel locomotives, of which only 34 were produced after 2000 (including 30 "Americans"). Moreover, more than 40% of these locomotives are out of order, most of all broken equipment is on the Lviv railway.
