The Railways is threatening to turn a planner’s nightmare into reality. A Rs 1,100-crore investment made in the recent past is all set to be rendered useless by a fresh investment of Rs 460 crore.The Railways had bought new diesel locomotives from General Motors, set up a shed for their maintenance and even got technology transferred to its Diesel Locomotives Works. But after spending about Rs 1,100 crore, it now plans to make the exercise redundant by electrifying the territory on which these diesel locomotives run.There is a move towards electrification of Pune-Guntakal-Renigunta section by making it part of the National Rail Vikas Yojana despite objections from finance, planning and mechanical directorates of the Railway Board. The section falls on the Mumbai-Chennai arm of the Golden Quadrilateral and carries container, iron ore, foodgrain and fertiliser traffic besides passenger trains.The south central and central Railways under which the section falls had also opposed the project on grounds of it being a single line section. In fact, the electrification project was frozen through a decision of the full Railway Board and subsequently it was decided to home high capacity GM locomotives at Hubli. These locomotives haul iron-ore trains from Hospet to Renigunta.
