The Ukrainian Railway public joint-stock company (Ukrzaliznytsia) will install 614 additional external power-supply units for cooling and 22 for heating passenger cars this year, the company told the CFTS portal.
Installation of the external power-supply units at Ukrzaliznytsia’s yards for preparation of trains for journeys began last year. In total, 785 external power-supply units for cooling and 41 for heating passenger cars will be operated through installation of new and restoration of the existing ones. This will allow cooled railcars to be delivered for boarding by passengers in the summer and heated railcars in the winter.
The external power-supply units will be installed in railcar maintenance yards at train stations in Kovel, Chernivtsi, Odesa, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhia, and Kryvyi Rih. External power-supply units were installed at train preparation yards in Mariupol, Kostiantynivka, and Kharkiv last year.
According to Ukrzaliznytsia’s head Wojciech Balczun, investments in the additional equipment will allow the company to solve a problem that accumulated over decades. "We are working simultaneously in many areas: preparation of wagons for journeys, new standards for bed linen, improvement of sanitation, purchase of new rolling stock…," Balczun said. He added that the company expected these changes to happen quickly, but the problems are difficult to solve simultaneously because they accumulated over a period of several years.
