The Indian locomotive class WDG-5 (EMD GT50AC) is a class of heavy haul Diesel-electric locomotive built by

Banaras Locomotive Works The Banaras Locomotive Works (BLW) (formerly Diesel Locomotive Works (DLW)) in Varanasi, India, is a production unit of Indian Railways. DLW stopped manufacturing diesel locomotives in March 2019 and was renamed BLW in Oct 2020. History Founde ...

, Varanasi in collaboration with Electro-Motive Diesel. At a rated power output of , it is the second most powerful diesel locomotive class on

Indian Railways Indian Railways (IR) is a statutory body under the ownership of Ministry of Railways, Government of India that operates India's national railway system. It manages the fourth largest national railway system in the world by size, with a tota ...

, just out-powered by the WDG-6G. Derived from the EMD SD80MAC, it was meant as a direct upgrade to the WDG-4 GT46MAC ( SD70MAC derivative). The locomotive series is named Bheem, after the strong

Pandav The Pandavas (Sanskrit: पाण्डव, IAST: Pāṇḍava) refers to the five legendary brothers— Yudhishthira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva—who are the central characters of the Hindu epic ''Mahabharata''. They are acknowledged ...

brother from epic

Mahabharata The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; sa, महाभारतम्, ', ) is one of the two major Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epics of ancient India in Hinduism, the other being the ''Ramayana, Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the s ...

. The loco has an EMD 20N-710G3B-EC 20 cylinder engine of the EMD SD80MAC and an AC-AC transmission. Since the loco has been developed by installing a v20-710 prime mover and replacing the standard v16 in the WDG4 GT46MAC locomotive, the model was re-designated by adding 4 to the predecessor model, becoming GT-50, owing to the number of cylinders going from 16 to 20. Development of this locomotive is one of the Best Examples of Atma-Nirbhar Bharat. The class was stopped only with 7 units due to the v20-710 powerpack having high fuel consumption, similar to why the original SD80MAC were discontinued and were ultimately scrapped. Compounding the issue was Indian Railways aiming for complete network

electrification Electrification is the process of powering by electricity and, in many contexts, the introduction of such power by changing over from an earlier power source. The broad meaning of the term, such as in the history of technology, economic histor ...

as part of the Net Zero-Carbon Emission programme, during which it discontinued building EMD locomotives and transitioned to greener diesel locomotives based on

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable en ...

(GE)'s

GEvo The Evolution Series is a line of diesel locomotives built by GE Transportation Systems (now owned by Wabtec), initially designed to meet the U.S. EPA's Tier 2 locomotive emissions standards that took effect in 2005. The first pre-production ...

Evolution Series platform. Examples of such are the 4,500 hp (3.4 MW) WDG-4G (GE ES43ACmi) that uses the 12-cylinder version of the

Prime Mover, and the 6,000 hp (4.5 MW) WDG-6G (GE ES58ACmi) that uses the 16-cylinder version of the same engine.

Locomotive shed

References

See also