Russian Railways announced the opening of a new locomotive service point at the Zabaikalsk station. The service point will serve the repair and maintenance of diesel locomotives, including those operating on narrow-gauge in foreign trade. Additionally, after the electrification of the Borzya-Zabaikalsk section is complete, it will also be able to receive electric locomotives.

The investment for the construction of the site reaches the amount of 600 million rubles (6,68 million euros). Combined with the investment that concerns the reconstruction and electrification of the Borzya-Zabaikalsk section, the amount spent reaches 5.1 billion rubles (56,8 million euros) The rail operator has laid out a considerable sum of funds that will upgrade the Zabaikalsk-Manchuria border-crossing altogether.

Characteristics

The new service point was constructed with two floors that include a variety of facilities. On the first floor, one can find spaces designed for the housing of repair stores, and administrative and utility rooms. On the second floor, there are extra spaces that can get utilised for the conduction of technical classes and workshops, concerning automatic locomotive signalling and device repair. Finally, according to the Russian Railways, the service point will be able to carry out the maintenance of twenty-one locomotives daily.

Choosing Zabaikalsk for the implementation of such an investment was not coincidental. In contrast, it was a carefully calculated move, since the specific station constitutes the busiest crossing point between Russia and China. More specifically, the border crossing is seeing a gradual increase of the volumes transported through it during the past few years. Indicatively, for the first ten months of 2020, the Zabaikalsk-Manchuria border crossing saw the transportation of 15,1 million tonnes of foreign cargo.