Domestic locomotives replace US ones in Tibet

Train locomotives made by the CRRC Dalian have replaced USmade locomotives in one of the highest-elevation railways in China, signaling a remarkable advance in China’s locomotive manufacturing technologies and a clear sign of technological independence for China’s most strategic railway.

Chinese railway locomotive producer CRRC Dalian Co announced on Friday that 12 pairs of locomotives it produced would be used in a section of the Qinghai-Tibet railway that runs through an area with very high elevations, according to a report by news website chinanews.com.

The Qinghai-Tibet railway is a high-elevation link between Xining, capital of Northwest China’s Qinghai Province and Lhasa, capital of Southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region. Some sections of the railway run through extremely high-elevation, harsh conditions that require high-performance locomotives. The highest point of the railway is 5,072 meters above sea level.

Previously, locomotives imported from the US were used for the Golmud-Lhasa section of the railway.

The 1,142-kilometer route previously used NJ2 diesel locomotives, provided by US-based GE Transportation, but from now on a customized version adapted to high-altitude environments of the domestic HXN3 locomotive, manufactured by CRRC Dalian, will be used, according t the report. With the new locomotives, speed could reach 120 kilometers per hour.

“American locomotives were chosen as domestic ones couldn’t satisfy the requirements of power and resilience at such extreme heights,” Zhao Jian, a professor at Beijing Jiaotong University, told the Global Times. “CRRC Dalian for years has had cooperation with GE Transportation, and their own technology now has advanced considerably,” he said.

Before replacing US locomotives at the Golmud-Lhasa section, high-elevation adapted versions of CRRC Dalian’s HXN3 locomotives were used since 2014 in the Lhasa-Xigaze section of the railway, which runs west for 253 kilometers to connect Lhasa to the region’s second-biggest city.

Xigaze is the planned starting point for the 540-kilometer China-Nepal railway, which is a key projects under the China-proposed Belt and Road initiative.

“The China-Nepal railway right now has little cargo flow, but it has strategic significance,” said Zhao.