{"id":522,"date":"2024-06-07T11:04:15","date_gmt":"2024-06-07T11:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scedar.eu\/?p=522"},"modified":"2024-06-07T11:04:16","modified_gmt":"2024-06-07T11:04:16","slug":"from-crisis-to-adaptation-part-ii-railway-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scedar.eu\/en\/from-crisis-to-adaptation-part-ii-railway-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"From crisis to adaptation (part II. – railway industry)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Railway Industry<\/p>\n\n\n\n In our previous article, we explored the automotive industry, which quickly found replacements from Asia. However, a different situation currently applies to trains, which we will discuss in the following text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Passenger Trains<\/p>\n\n\n\n The altered geopolitical situation has also impacted the railway engineering sector. Particularly due to the conflict in Ukraine and the inability to import spare parts for trains, European companies have ceased construction and\/or servicing of their modern trains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spanish company Patentes Talgo, which manufactured high-speed Striz trains, unilaterally terminated<\/a> its contract with Federal Passenger Company JSC (FPK, a subsidiary of Russian Railways) for servicing its trains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Similarly, German company Siemens has taken the same<\/a> route, closely collaborating with Russian Railways. It’s worth noting that the German company, in the Train Technologies joint venture established with Russian Railways and Sinara, produced cars for the Lastochka high-speed train and was also involved in servicing the Sapsan high-speed trains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hence, the immediate question arose: How would these trains be serviced? In some cases, they have already been abandoned: on March 10, 2022, operations of the Striz trains on the Moscow – Nizhny Novgorod route were abruptly halted without explanation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, as journalists from Novye Izvestiya report<\/a>, who conducted interviews with industry experts, Russia will not be left without personal trains and carriages in general. This is because it has its own models that are highly independent of imports, such as EP2D, EP3D, and Ivolga trains. The question remains, however, about the quality of the trains. According to independent transportation industry expert Alexey Tuzov, Lastochka trains are 16 times more reliable than Ivolga, as demonstrated in tests conducted in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cargo Trains<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition to the issues with passenger trains, there is also an urgent problem with the supply of spare parts for freight cars. For example, in 2022, companies such as Amsted Rail, Timken, and SKF, which produced cassette bearings for innovative railway cars, restricted<\/a> their activities in Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Subsequently, one of the largest operators of gondola cars with an axle load of 25 tons per axle, the National Transport Company, made a statement<\/a> predicting significant risks of a shortage of cassette bearings for coal transportation and called for the abolition of customs duties on bearings imported from China. According to the company, due to the shortage, there were up to 7,500 idle 25-ton gondola cars in Russia in August 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As noted by experts cited<\/a> by RBC, this has largely led to a 20.4% decrease in freight wagon production last year, and according to calculations by the Rollingstock industrial agency, deliveries of new freight cars to the Russian Railways network in 2023-2025 may decrease by 19.2% compared to 2020-2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n