Saturday, May 17, 2008
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Railways (PR) will purchase 300 new freight coaches at the cost of $25 million to improve its freight service, an official at the Ministry of Railways said here on Friday.

The ministry has approved the PC-1 of the project that would be executed shortly. All the carriages would be imported and the project would meet urgent demand of the Railways, he said. “The new coaches would help generate more revenue and would make the freight service faster than ever,” said the official.

The new freight coaches would run at a speed of up to 100 kilometres per hour, the top speed for freight trains in the country. Though the PR is also manufacturing 1,300 wagons at the local level, yet it has decided to import 300 bogeys as well, the official said.

Out of the 1,300 wagons, 1,000 have been more or less manufactured, while the rest would be completed soon, he said. These wagons are being manufactured in the PR Workshop at Lahore. “The PR decided to purchase more freight coaches in order to overcome the loss it faced in the riots followed by the PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto’s assassination.”

The PR has also urged private companies, both national and international, to avail the “Open Track Policy”, which allows them to operate their own rolling stock while paying track access charges to the PR.

http://thenews.jang.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=112972