Railways corporation defends acquisition of 11 Diesel Multiple Units

The Kenya Railways Corporation has defended acquisition of 11 second hand Diesel Multiple Units following mounting criticism terming the locomotives as technically and operationally suitable for operation on the Nairobi commuter meter gauge rail network.

KRC is spending 1.5 billion shillings on the locomotives including five coaches and spare parts expected to arrive in four months time.

The operator expects to ferry 132,000 passengers daily within the metropolitan when the trains begin operation.

Some of the 11 locomotives to be imported from Spain are as old as 25 years.

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The move is expected to scale up capacity of commuter rail services from the current 13,000 or just 1% of city passenger traffic.

With the trains set to arrive in June, the acquisition has ran into headwinds with critics questioning the procurement procedure over operational uncertainties.

In a statement, Kenya Railways says it sent a technical team to undertake technical evaluation of the DMUs in December.

The technical team confirmed that the DMUs on sale by SFM were technically and operationally suitable for operation on the Nairobi commuter Metre gauge Rail Network and that the spare parts can be sourced locally.

They have a remaining economic useful life of 25-30 years, whose main components and technology such as the engines, transmission and braking system has been use in Kenya Railways.

The 10 billion, Nairobi Metropolitan commuter rail master plan will include improvement of the commuter rail service within 6 to 12 months.

Kenya railway further notes that “We have refurbished forty coaches, while another 20 is underway in addition to repair of two GE class 93 locomotives.

The revamping of commuter rail service will result in the transportation of 132,000 passengers daily away from 13,000 passengers currently.

Under the same plan newly acquired DMUs will be deployed over five routes from Nairobi central station to Syokimau, Embakasi Village Thika Kikuyu and Kitengela.”