RUSSIAN Railways (RZD) has announced some of its Class EP20 or ‘Olympus’ electric locos have accumulated one million kilometres in traffic – within three years of entering service.
RZD ordered 200 of the Bo-Bo-Bo locos from leading Russian rail engineering firm Transmashholding (Transmash) in 2010. The first EP20 locos entered service in time for the 2014 Winter Olympics held in the Russian city of Sochi.
The 200km/h dual voltage 3000V DC/25 kV AC locos are designed for passenger services and are a joint Transmash/Alstom design (Alstom owns 33% of the Russian firm).
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By mid-January 2017 Transmash had delivered 56 locos from its Novocherkassk electric locomotive building plant in southern Russia. Class EP20 electric locomotives are currently based at five RZD regional locomotive departments: Moskovskaya (Moscow), Gorkovskaya (Nizhny Novgorod), Oktyabrskaya (October Railway – between Moscow and
St Petersburg), plus the North Caucasus and South Eastern Railways. The locos operate passenger services between Moscow and a wide range of cities, including Adler, on the Black Sea coast, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, and Yekaterinburg, east of Moscow, plus St Petersburg to the north. The locos also operate into neighbouring countries, reaching Minsk and Brest in Belarus and the Vainikkala border station in Finland.
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