The National Railway Corporation (NRC) said two newly procured speed locomotive acquired for the Kaduna-Abuja standard gauge train service would be inaugurated in October. The Liaison Officer of the Corporation, Pascal Nnorli who made this known in a chat with newsmen in Abuja disclosed that the new locomotives are the ones originally billed to be used on the route. He explained that the current locomotives on the route are the one used during construction.
He further hinted that the new locomotives, when launched would reduce travel time from 2:45 minutes to 1:30 minutes stressing that the number of daily train services will also increase from the present four. Nnorli added that CCECC has already commenced technical evaluation of the locomotives and would start the training of 488 staff working on the rail corridor after the locomotives are handed over to NRC this week.
“By this week, the locomotives should be fully taken over from the Chinese. Once the NRC takes full possession of the two locomotives, the training of Nigerians who will operate them will commence. The training will be done by technical staff of the CCECC just like they did before the train service was launched.”
“The training should last for about two weeks. After the two weeks training, the locomotives will be test run for about a week before they will be launched for commercial operations. All these processes shouldn’t take more than a month, all things been equal, Once we deploy the new locomotives, we can increase our speed and cut short our travel time from Abuja to Kaduna,” he added.
