Picture: Five 68-Seater Coaches Arrives on Nigeria Railway

 

The Nigeria Railway Corporation, NRC has taken delivery of five additional 68-seater air conditioned coaches, two 16-seater rail buses and eighteen 5-seater Motorised Trolleys.


Addressing journalists in Lagos while conducting final inspection on the new railway vehicles, the Managing Director, Nigeria Railway Corporation, Engineer Adeseyi Sijuade said that “the new coaches will be deployed over the next two weeks on an extension of the train service from Makurdi to Gombe passing through Lafia, Kanfanchan, Kuru, Jos, Bauchi and with a spur line from Kanfanchan to Kaduna.”

He disclosed that “while the two new rail buses will be deployed for inspection of certain parts of the rail network, the eighteen motorized trolleys will be allocated to railway maintenance engineers to facilitate regular inspection and maintenance of the tracks.”

Recall that the Corporation had in April, 2014 commissioned the first set of 68-seater passenger coaches, six in number, bringing the total number of 68-seater air conditioned coaches added to the corporation’s fleet to eleven.

Sijuade told journalists that the railway vehicles were designed and manufactured in China specifically for the Corporation’s narrow gauge railway system by CSR Nanjing Puzhen Company Ltd., and Kintech Nigeria Ltd.

According to him, the newly acquired air conditioned coaches have been tested satisfactorily in the Corporation’s Lagos workshops and are now being deployed for commissioning.

He said: “We spent the whole weekend testing the whole appliances within these five coaches. These include the air conditioning, the automatic dust system and the passenger information system etc. They have all been tested satisfactorily. We are deploying them to the Eastern line.”

“However, for the commissioning purpose, we are deploying them to the Makurdi Railway station, where it will be commissioned on Thursday, 22nd January. The commissioning will be taking place along with the flagging off of the intercity passenger service that runs from Makurdi to Port Harcourt. As a matter of fact, the trains will be moving from Makurdi, following the flag off, to Port Harcourt,” he added.

Vanguard