From crisis to adaptation (part II. – railway industry)

Railway Industry

In our previous article, we explored the automotive industry, which quickly found replacements from Asia. However, a different situation currently applies to trains, which we will discuss in the following text.

Passenger Trains

The altered geopolitical situation has also impacted the railway engineering sector. Particularly due to the conflict in Ukraine and the inability to import spare parts for trains, European companies have ceased construction and/or servicing of their modern trains.

Spanish company Patentes Talgo, which manufactured high-speed Striz trains, unilaterally terminated its contract with Federal Passenger Company JSC (FPK, a subsidiary of Russian Railways) for servicing its trains.

Similarly, German company Siemens has taken the same route, closely collaborating with Russian Railways. It’s worth noting that the German company, in the Train Technologies joint venture established with Russian Railways and Sinara, produced cars for the Lastochka high-speed train and was also involved in servicing the Sapsan high-speed trains.

Hence, the immediate question arose: How would these trains be serviced? In some cases, they have already been abandoned: on March 10, 2022, operations of the Striz trains on the Moscow – Nizhny Novgorod route were abruptly halted without explanation.

However, as journalists from Novye Izvestiya report, who conducted interviews with industry experts, Russia will not be left without personal trains and carriages in general. This is because it has its own models that are highly independent of imports, such as EP2D, EP3D, and Ivolga trains. The question remains, however, about the quality of the trains. According to independent transportation industry expert Alexey Tuzov, Lastochka trains are 16 times more reliable than Ivolga, as demonstrated in tests conducted in 2019.

Cargo Trains

In addition to the issues with passenger trains, there is also an urgent problem with the supply of spare parts for freight cars. For example, in 2022, companies such as Amsted Rail, Timken, and SKF, which produced cassette bearings for innovative railway cars, restricted their activities in Russia.

Subsequently, one of the largest operators of gondola cars with an axle load of 25 tons per axle, the National Transport Company, made a statement predicting significant risks of a shortage of cassette bearings for coal transportation and called for the abolition of customs duties on bearings imported from China. According to the company, due to the shortage, there were up to 7,500 idle 25-ton gondola cars in Russia in August 2023.

As noted by experts cited by RBC, this has largely led to a 20.4% decrease in freight wagon production last year, and according to calculations by the Rollingstock industrial agency, deliveries of new freight cars to the Russian Railways network in 2023-2025 may decrease by 19.2% compared to 2020-2022.

During this period, import initiatives were possible: bearings from Chinese Wafangdian and Luoyang LYC, as well as from Uzbek SPZ Bearings, were approved for use in repairs and wagon production.

Meanwhile, the production of Russian cassette bearings has been increased by EPK-Brenko and TEK-KOM Production companies, which signed special investment agreements with the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade for the complete localization of cassette bearing production.

In the fall of 2023, a complex situation with covered wagons also came to light. Maxim Zinchenko, the CEO of RailSpetsTrans, noted that “the deficit is growing, and it is difficult to compensate for sales due to high car prices – in the first half of the year, they increased by 20%, and compared to the beginning of 2022 – by about 55 percent.”

The challenges faced by the Russian railway industry, including disruptions in the supply of spare parts, a decrease in freight wagon production, and a complex situation with covered wagons, underscore the significant impact of geopolitical factors and sanctions. While efforts have been made to address these issues through import initiatives and increased domestic production, the industry continues to grapple with shortages and rising costs. These developments highlight the need for strategic planning and investment to ensure the resilience and sustainability of Russia’s railway infrastructure amidst evolving geopolitical dynamics.