RUSSIA: Following the inauguration of an initial facility in Chelyabinsk in 2013, wagon manufacturer United Wagon Company and Russian Railways have established five further bespoke training centres for advanced wheelset maintenance.
Located on RZD’s Oktyabrskaya, Krasnoyarskaya and Zapadno-Sibirskaya railways, the jointly-managed facilities are intended to provide maintenance staff with detailed vocational skills for maintaining wagons with Barber bogies. Staff will be issued with interactive electronic manuals and receive classes online and in real time. Three-dimensional visualisation will be used to ensure that staff have an accurate understanding of the design and behaviour of the bogies.
‘The technical and operational characteristics of wagons are improving, and this is the driving force behind the modernisation of the Russian fleet’, commented Andrey Cherevko, Deputy Director of RZD’s Central Infrastructure Directorate in western Siberia. ‘This is why it is important we open joint training centres in conjunction with the manufacturers of rolling stock. The first-hand knowledge and maintenance skills staff gain from this process significantly improves the quality of wagon maintenance and also shortens maintenance time.’
