PR gets 70 freight wagons from China

LAHORE : Chinese authorities have dispatched 70 state-of-the-art railway wagons to be attached with freight trains in Pakistan. These wagons will reach Karachi port on January 16 (tomorrow), said a railway official on Saturday.

The railway authorities said another batch of 130 such wagons will join Pakistan Railways’ fleet in March this year. These wagons are part of a Pakistan Railways project to obtain 820 modern wagons from China under Transfer of Technology contract with Beijing, under which the rest of the 620 wagons will be manufactured in Pakistan.

The railway officials said that the manufacturing of modern railway wagons inside the country will save huge money and foreign exchange for the national exchequer, besides increasing employment opportunities and revenue for the railways in the coming years. They said the new wagons will increase the railways revenue by more than one and a half billion rupees annually. They said the new wagons have a capacity of carrying a load of 70 tonnes at 100 kmph while the current wagons can run at a speed of 80 kmph with a weight of 60 tonnes.

They said after the inclusion of these wagons, the railways freight operations and revenue will increase to great extents, besides promoting the trend of transporting the freight through the railways.