UWC to deliver 700 LPG tank cars to Western Petroleum Transportation

United Wagon Company (UWC), Russia’s leading manufacturer of freight cars, will deliver 700 tank cars for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to rail operator Western Petroleum Transportation. The first batch has already been dispatched to the customer.

The tank car, Model 15-6855, has a higher payload of 61 t and a larger boiler space of 86.7 m³ allowing it to carry the biggest load among its common-type counterparts. The freight car is built to 1-T loading gauge and is licensed for operation on public and private railway tracks across the entire 1520-mm track gauge area. The tank car has a service life of 40 years.

As one of its key advantages, the car uses innovative bogies with an increased maintenance interval of up to 1 million km or 8 years. By comparison, a common-type tank car mounted on 18-100 or similar bogies will have to undergo its first scheduled depot maintenance upon completing 210,000 km, or 3 years after construction, with the service to be repeated every 110–210 thousand km or 3 years.

Evgeny Ivanov, Head of Railcar Operation Service at Western Petroleum Transportation, LLC: “We already have positive experience with the chemical tank cars built in Tikhvin. When entering into the new contract with UWC, we primarily had in mind the economic performance and operational reliability of the freight cars. We hope to use them to raise our share in the liquefied hydrocarbons transportation market, optimise transport costs and successfully fulfil our increased obligations to customers.”