On August 3, Baoshen Railway Group achieved the large-scaled application of a full set of intelligent driving technology for heavy-haul railways on its traction locomotives, marking a historic step forward in the China’s heavy-haul railway intelligent driving technology. This development blazes a new trail for the railway industry to foster new quality productive forces tailored to local conditions.
At its debut, the heavy-haul intelligent driving train encompassed two “Guoneng” 12-axle locomotives with 108 carriages stretching 1,400 meters and weighing over 10,000 tonnes. The train departed from Zhugaita Station, the largest lateral-type single-yard marshalling station in China, and arrived at Huanghua Port Station in Hebei Province.
After five years of unremitting effort, the intelligent driving technology has expanded from a single 8-axle electric locomotive to 30 electric locomotives across various models, including 8-axle, 12-axle, and 24-axle configurations. The heavy-haul train marshalling modes have also evolved, enabling flexible combinations such as 3+0, 2+0, and 1+0. This achievement not only signifies the large-scaled application of intelligent driving technology in China’s heavy-haul freight trains, but also marks an accumulated safe operating mileage of 2.08 million kilometers, 9,508 trips and 41.07 million tonnes of coal transportation. Moreover, the intelligent driving system for heavy-haul locomotives has successfully passed the international safety integrity Level (SIL)2, setting a model of collaboration among upstream and downstream enterprises in the heavy-haul railway equipment industry chain to develop the core technology with fully independent intellectual property rights in high-end manufacturing. This breakthrough demonstrates a marvelous transition from “manufacturing” to “intelligent manufacturing” in China’s high-end rail transit equipment, contributing to the development of new quality productive forces and the comprehensive upgrade of the railway freight system.
