Siemens India has received a letter of award (LoA) from Indian Railways for the manufacturing and maintenance of 9000 HP electric freight locomotives.

Under the $3.2bn worth contract, the company will manufacture 1200 high horse power (9000 HP) electric locomotives at the Dahodto railways factory over a period of 11 years.

The company will also be responsible for the maintenance of these locomotives for 35 years.

The agreement will be signed within 30 days of the issue of the LoA.

Siemens is planning to deliver prototype locomotives in the coming two years.

Dahod facility is anticipated to be fully constructed to produce the HP electric freight locomotives within a term of two years.

Siemens, which will serve as a technological partner, will maintain these locomotives at four depots located in Vishakhapatnam, Raipur, Kharagpur and Pune.

Indian Railways plans to use the HP locomotives on Western DFC, as well as on graded sections of Railways for hauling container freight trains in double stack configuration of 4500t at 75 kmph at 1 in 200 gradient.

These locomotives are expected to have an average speed of around 50-60 kmph over the existing 20-25 kmph.

They will feature insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) based propulsion technology, which will enable savings in energy consumption due to regenerative braking technology.

Siemens India has been selected through a competitive bidding process for manufacturing and maintaining these locomotives using Railway staff under the technology partner supervision.

Last month, Siemens launched a new production facility for rail bogies at Aurangabad in the Indian state of Maharashtra.