Saidpur railway workshop

Saidpur railway workshop is a railway workshop in Bangladesh situated at Saidpur, Nilphamari District and operated by Bangladesh Railway.[1] It is one of the two railway workshops in Bangladesh (the other being Pahartali railway workshop in Chittagong) where maintenance and repair of railway coaches and wagons are done. It is also the largest railway workshop of the country.[2]

Saidpur railway workshop
Native name
সৈয়দপুর রেলওয়ে কারখানা
TypePublic
IndustryRailway
Founded1870 (1870)
HeadquartersSaidpur,
Nilphamari District
,
Bangladesh
ServicesMaintenance, repair and operations
OwnerBangladesh Railway
A preserved broad-gauge steam locomotive

Details

In 1870, Saidpur railway workshop was established as a meter-gauge steam locomotive repair shed on a 110-acre land. Later, with the installation of plants and machines to repair meter-gauge and broad-gauge coaches and wagons, the workshop became fully equipped in 1953 at 800 acres of land. There are 25 different shops where repair work is done and around 1,200 items of spare parts and tools for carriage and wagon are manufactured.[3][4]

Besides repairing and maintaining, manufacturing of coaches and wagons was also made in the workshop. But in 1993, the then government stopped the initiative of manufacturing.[4] The workshop is currently suffering from manpower shortage. As of 2020, only 918 staffers, including officers, instead of the 2,825 sanctioned manpower are working, so there is a 68% manpower shortage.[3][5]

In 2016, plans for installing a new carriage shop to manufacture coaches and wagons in the area of 20 acres inside the workshop were made by Bangladesh Railway.[4] There are also plans to modernise the workshop and appointing new manpower.[6]

Preserved locomotives

Three locomotives are preserved in this workshop. The first one is a narrow-gauge (762 mm) steam locomotive CS 15 built by W. G. Bagnall, England in 1936. It is 18 ft 8 in long and 7 ft 6 in wide. It served the Khulna-Bagerhat railway section between 1936 and 1969.[2][7]

The second one is a broad-gauge (1676 mm) steam locomotive SGC-Z 240, built jointly by Sir WG Armstrong With Worth & Co, Vulcan Foundry and Kerr, Stuart and Company (both are English companies) in 1921. It is 53 ft 10 in long. It served the Paksey railway division between 1921 and 1936.[2][7]

The third one is a metre-gauge (1000 mm) diesel hydraulic locomotive MHZ-8 (3332) built by Ganz-MÁVAG in 1982. It is 38 ft long. It ran from 1983 to 1999.[2]

References
  1. "SAIDPUR RAILWAY WORKSHOP". Nilphamari.info. Retrieved 2020-11-12.
  2. "On the track of history: Century-old locomotives in Saidpur". The Daily Star. 2020-08-03. Retrieved 2020-11-12.
  3. "Repair-shop in need of repair". The Business Standard. 2020-04-17. Retrieved 2020-11-12.
  4. "BD to manufacture rail coaches, wagons". Bangladesh Post. 2020-02-07. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
  5. "Manpower shortage haunts Saidpur railway workshop". The Independent. 2018-12-19. Retrieved 2020-11-12.
  6. "Saidpur Rly Workshop to be modernised : Minister". The New Nation. 2019-09-16. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
  7. "Preserved Steam Locomotives in Bangladesh". Internationalsteam.co.uk. Retrieved 2017-08-28.

Media related to Saidpur Railway Workshop at Wikimedia Commons

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.