Background
Back in the 1920s, work began on the electrification of the railway line between Casa Blanca, Hershey and Matanzas and the first electric locomotives and rail cars were introduced. The railway line is a standard gauge railway, i.e., 1435 mm wide. The line is 136 kilometers long, 122 kilometers of which were electrificated. The growing frequency of disruptions in equipment and cars along with the resultant train downtimes were the main reasons why passenger numbers declined from 2.26 million in 1993 to 431,000 in 2007.
Project description
In the coming years, the Hershey railway line is to be rehabilitated through targeted investment. The condition of the equipment is to be improved and the reliability, speed and frequency of the trains are to be enhanced. The main goals of the rehabilitation measures are to achieve the 1993 passenger figures by 2014 and to make the line attractive for day tourists who wish to travel from cities to Cuba's beaches. That's why GAUFF Engineering was commissioned together with specialist engineers from the Ministry of transport to tackle the following tasks:
- Rehabilitation of the power supply network of the Havana-Matanzas railway line
- Training for staff of Ferrocarril Cubano
Services
The customer originally envisaged the following goals which were then specified in more detail during the course of the work on site and drawn up in a study:
Restoration of the entire catenary network
Use of three transformer substations
Expansion of the electricity grid up to La Coubre station (14 km)
Repair of the protection and control system for the entire line
Restoration of operation of the electric railway network to the beaches in the east
of the city and the camping grounds on the coast of Havana