OREANDA-NEWS. July 20, 2012. Kolomensky Zavod (Moscow Region, a part of CJSC Transmashholding) delivered EP2K electric locomotive No. 150 to the St.-Petersburg Passenger Moscow depot of the October Railway, as per information from the Holding’s PR Department. As of today, 138 EP2K electric locomotives are operated on the West-Siberian railway and bring trains to Chelyabinsk, Mariyinsk, Novosibirsk, Novokuznetsk, Belovo, Petropavlovsk, Yekaterinburg, Perm. 12 EP2K locomotives work on the October Railway. These locomotives are in use on the line sections Saint Petersburg - Svir, Saint Petersburg – Babayevo, Saint Petersburg – Vologda, and start to be driven on the route between Saint Petersburg and Moscow. By order of JSC  RZD, Kolomensky Zavod will produce 40 EP2K locomotives in 2012. The locomotives are in continuous operation since May 2008. “The total run of EP2K electric locomotives exceeded 40 mio km within this period, which means a distance equal to 1000 rounds along the Earth equator,” – as the Technical Director of JSC  Kolomensky Zavod Vyacheslav Shelemetyev highlights. According to JSC  RZD development program, the passenger DC electric locomotive development became one of the priorities in the course of the transport branch reformation, because no similar equipment has been manufactured in Russia before and passenger DC electric locomotives were purchased in Czechoslovakia. By the time the work started on the new electric locomotive development, the mean age of locomotives in operation was 30 years. The EP2K replace the Czechoslovak ChS2 locomotives purchased from the mid-1960s till the mid-1970s. As compared with the locomotives withdrawn, the EP2K possess a number of basic technical advantages in regard of power and traction characteristics: capacity increased by 14%, traction effort by 20%. New electric locomotives provide for more comfortable work conditions of the locomotive teams, they have driver cabs equipped with HVAC-systems complying with the up-to-date sanitary regulations. During the period of EP2K locomotive production, a considerable scope of work related to the design development and locomotive reliability enhancement was executed, systems were integrated for the climate control and the automatic train operation enabling the train operator to drive the train without any assistant.