Prasa’s ‘too tall’ locos cut to size

Lofty engines back on track to help out depleted rail fleet

● As Prasa’s Shosholoza Meyl long-distance trains get ready to start running this month, the agency is also planning to refurbish some of the “too tall” Spanish locomotives that were banned from operating shortly after they arrived in SA.

With just 12 locomotives serviceable out of its 122-strong fleet, the passenger rail agency urgently needs reliable locomotives for its long-distance trains.

Prasa will have to make various modifications to the locomotives before they can be put back in use, confirmed outgoing Prasa administrator Bongisizwe Mpondo.

“The railway safety regulator ordered remedial actions, which would cost about R1m for each loco,” he said.

The modifications, listed in a 2016 report by the safety regulator, included fitting cameras in place of side mirrors, installing twoway radios and modifying radiator pipes to prevent them from sticking out the side of the locomotive.

However, at 4.140m high, the locomotive roofs could touch the overhead wires on the parts of the rail network where 3,000-volt overhead power is used.

The regulator said the locomotives should only be used on non-electrified routes or the 25,000-volt routes, where there is greater clearance between the train and the wires.

In an undated report from Vossloh, which the Sunday Times has seen, the Spanish company claims the locomotives comply with the height restriction, which held that there should be a minimum gap of 4.5cm between the locomotive and the overhead wires.

It claims that, according to Transnet specifications, the height of the overhead wires above the tracks can range between 4.220m and 6m.

Although the controversial locomotives have been standing idle since 2015, they will need only a major service before putting them back in use, said a rail industry contractor speaking on condition of anonymity.

The source said only one of the new locomotives — which has been standing out in the sea air in Port Elizabeth — will need a lot of work.

The rest are “perfectly fine”, he said.

“But they will need a major service, roughly R100,000 per loco. The PE loco will need a couple of hundreds of thousands of rands to fix.”

Prasa is hoping that the government approves a deal in which Swiss locomotive builder Stadler Rail, which bought Vossloh in 2015, “makes good” on the money it earned from the original deal in which relatively unknown firm Swifambo Rail won a contract to supply new locomotives.

The R2.5bn contract was for 20 Afro 4000 diesel and 50 Afro Dual hybrid engines ning on both diesel and overhead electric power. Stadler was paid R1.8bn.

Some 13 Afro 4000 locomotives had been shipped from Spain by the time tests showed the new engines ran the risk of fouling the overhead wires.

Last year Stadler offered to supply Prasa with the 18 diesel and hybrid locomotives that had been built but never delivered, as well as help refurbish the remaining engines.

The deal — which would be covered by the R1.8bn already paid to Stadler — would also see the builder supply another four new hybrid locomotives. The hybrid locos are not affected by the height restriction.

“They said they wanted to make good of what was bad,” said Mpondo.

In November 2015, the Prasa board asked a court to set aside the deal on the grounds that the procurement process was corrupt.

“There is no doubt that the whole transaction was highly irregular,” said Mpondo.

“From a technical, financial, legal perspective, we asked the teams if there were any deal-breakers for us to recover what’s due to us. None ... said there was any issue.”

Seven of the Afro 4000 locomotives were auctioned off at the beginning of the year to a private operator, earning Prasa about R65m. That meant each locomotive had cost it about R100m.

“Where is the value for money?” said Mpondo.

Prasa plans to begin operating Shosholoza Meyl services between East London and Johannesburg on September 18, followed by Joburg to Port Elizabeth in October and Joburg to Musina in November.

Prasa was operating seven long-distance trains before the safety regulator temporarily suspended its permit in February following a collision in Gauteng in which a tourist was killed.

Its operating permit was restored shortly afterwards, but the lockdown brought all inter-provincial trains to a stop.