Freight Car of US Design First Certified in Russia

JOC Staff |
The Tikhvin Railway Car Building Plant has obtained a compliance certificate from the State Registry of Certification on the Federal Railway Transport for a solid-bottom gondola of Model 12-9833 with the 23.5t axial load.

The 23.5t solid-bottom gondola is a design of the leading company in engineering modern railcars - Starfire Engineering & Technologies (USA), to the Russian specifics the railcar was adapted by the Engineering Center of Railcar Builders. The rights to the gondola design are fully owned by the Tikhvin Railway Car Building Plant, which will provide for state economic interests in building the domestic industrial high-tech on the basis of importing of innovations and advanced process equipment.

A big degree of TVSZ gondola unification with typical railcars will ensure its speedy fit to the existing system of operation, maintenance and repair without additional investments in re-equipment of depots and in the personnel training.

It is a reminder that in 2009 the Tikhvin Railway Car Building Plant obtained a compliance certificate for the manufacture of a pilot batch of a drop-bottom gondola with the axial load of 23.5t.

The Managing Director of CJSC CTS - TVSZ Project Leader - Mr. Alexey Aleshin notes that TVSZ is one of the pioneers in the internal freight railcar construction who began to outsource overseas designers who apply the steering global expertise. On the one hand, for the railcar builders it means additional obligations, on the other hand - the transfer of state-of-the-art technologies opens a flow of new ideas and solutions in the industry to facilitate rapid development of the latter.

About the Tikhvin Railway Car Building Plant:

The ICT Group is implementing an investment project for construction of the Tikhvin Railway Car Building Plant (TVSZ) on the industrial site in the town of Tikhvin, Leningrad Region. The plant will manufacture 4 types of freight railway cars of new design (solid-bottom gondola, hopper car for mineral fertilizers, flat car for heavy-capacity containers of 80-feet lading length, universal drop-bottom gondola) of joint design by Starfire Engineering & Technologies (USA) and the Engineering Center of Railcar Builders (Russia) on the basis of the bogie with 23,5t and 25t axial load developed by Standard Car Truck (USA) and on the basis of a standard local bogie.

The annual production capacity of TVSZ is 13,000 railcars, 65,000 wheel sets, and 80,000 tons of steel railway castings. The plant occupies a 50-hectare site with 233,000 sq m production premises. The planned number of employees is 3,500 people. The total volume of investments in the project amounts to over 800 mln US dollars.