The Sunday News
Vusumuzi Dube, Senior Reporter
THE National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) has successfully designed and manufactured a load bank saving the national railway courier over US$500 000.
The completed load bank
A load bank is a critical piece of equipment used in workshops to test locomotives, which NRZ had previously had to import.
In a statement, NRZ public relations manager Mr Nyasha Maravanyika revealed that engineers and technicians at the NRZ Mechanical Engineer’s workshops managed to design and manufacture the equipment.
“A load bank is a machine that mimics a load on wagons to test whether the loco has enough power to pull the load. The test is conducted in static conditions in the workshops before a repaired locomotive is released into service.
“The NRZ had load banks at its major workshops in Bulawayo, Dabuka, Lochinvar and Mutare.
These were installed in the 1960s and only the one in Dabuka is still operational. The others broke down in the 1990s and locomotives were now being taken to Gweru for testing while in some cases, locomotives were released into service without the tests,” said Mr Maravanyika.
He revealed that NRZ engineers in designing and manufacturing the load bank, used materials that were available at NRZ workshops.
“With a zero budget, the team used material available in the NRZ Stores and from decommissioned locomotives to fashion the load bank. Working part-time on the project, the team took one year and a month to finish the prototype.
“The prototype was successfully tested on 20 and 21 February 2021. The project is an example of import substitution projects being undertaken by the NRZ MEs Workshops to save the country scarce foreign currency by manufacturing equipment in-house,” he said.
A new load bank costs more than US$500 000 in the United States of America (USA) excluding freight charges.
