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Indian Railways' CLW Flags Off Record 500th Loco This Year & It's A Very Special One
Chittaranjan Locomotive Works (CLW) in West Bengal has been one of the most important locomotive manufacturers for Indian Railways over the years. Now, CLW has hit another record, producing its 500th locomotive this financial year, breaking its previous record of 486 locos from 2021/22.
Chittaranjan Locomotive Works was started in 1950 and currently manufactures three types of electric locomotives for Indian Railways - two passenger locos: WAP-5, WAP-7 and the WAG-9 goods hauler. The record 500th and 501st locos that rolled out of CLW yesterday were the 12,000hp WAG-9 Twin locos.
The WAG-9 Twins are the latest version of the freight workhorse of the Indian railways, the WAG-9. The first set of WAG-9 Twins was flagged off from CLW on the 31st of October 2023.
The new WAG-9 Twins have been developed in-house by Chittaranjan Locomotive Works as an alternative to the WAG-12 twin locos manufactured by French manufacturer Alstom at the Electric Locomotive Factory in Madhepura in Bihar.
When the WAG-12 locos arrived in India back in 2018, they were the next step from its predecessor, the WAG-9 locomotive. The WAG-12 offered twice as much power as the WAG-9, 12,000hp compared to the latter's 6,125hp and was built specifically to operate on the Dedicated Freight Corridors.
With 800 locomotives of the WAG-12 set to hit the rails by 2028, it would have seemed that the Alstom-built locomotive be the only 12,000hp on our rails that would be used to haul goods by the Indian Railways. However, that wasn't the case as the engineers at Indian Railways had already started working on more twin locos.
These included two conversions of diesel locomotives into twin electric goods haulers. The first of these was the WAG-10, initially known as the WAGC-3, which converted two WDG-3A diesels into a 10,000hp twin-electric. While one used the panels from the WAG-5/WAM-4 loco, the other used the body panels from the WAG-9.
The second of these conversions was the WAG-11. This saw two WDG-4 diesel locos converted into a single 12,000hp twin-section locomotive which mated the Traction motors, bogies and other common electrical components from the diesel to WAG-9 shells and cabs.
However, the new WAG-9 Twins have seen CLW convert two WAG-9s into a twin-section locomotive that combines two of these 6,125hp locomotives into a 12,000hp rival to the WAG-12. With its 12 driven axles and heavier weight of 246 tonnes, the WAG-9 Twins offers a greater tractive effort than the WAG-12 which has 8 driven axles and a 180 tonne weight.
Thoughts About CLW's Record & The WAG-9 Twins
CLW has had yet another record year and the fact that the financial year still has two months more to go means that this locomotive manufacturer is going to push that number way past the 501 locos that were done till yesterday.
The fact that the record locos were the WAG-9 Twins shows us that Indian Railways is not resting on its laurels and is continuing to innovate as it looks to electrify its fleet and drive India's economy to new heights.
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