National Rail Production is the Realization of a Long National Wish

The completing Tavazon Projects Manager and Rail Project Executive Manager, Mr. Agha Baba took part in an interview with our correspondent for ESCO rail production which is as follow

The completing Tavazon Projects Manager and Rail Project Executive Manager, Mr. Agha Baba took part in an interview with our correspondent for ESCO rail production which is as follow; the consideration for possibility of rail production is more than two decades old. The first measures for rail production was placed on the heavy rolling mill in 1992 for rail U33 in Bala Rud Chenareh railway project, afterwards in 1994 the melting of steel for rail marked A900 (in compliance with UIC860 standard) in steelmaking section was produced and successfully casted. In continuation, the rail rolling was carried out in the heavy rolling mill 650 with some superficial modifications on the existing equipment, whose result was the production of about 5,000 tons of rails in that term, indicated that despite using all available facilities, due to the absence of some key equipment in the rolling mill 650 (such as fixing & online test for rail defects) it was impossible to produce rail in that workshop as per the request of IRI Railway Co.

After this practical measure, it was also revealed that in order to produce rail, in addition to the need to steel making section equipment, there is also a need to Vacuum Degassing (VD) the performance of one of the following options seemed necessary;

• Equipping of the rolling mill 650 with rail production instuments.
• Installation of a new workshop for rail production to heavy sections.

In that time, considering the investment expenses as well as market studies, rail production project did not reach implementation stage. In the year 2014, with the serious posing of rail production in ESCO and signing understanding memorandum between Minister of Cooperation, Labor and Social Affairs & Industry, Commerce, Roads and Urbanization Minister, entered practical phase with the implementation of one of the above options. In this respect, the 2nd option got priority to the 1st, due to the following reasons; first of all the amount of domestic request for rail did not justify the high investment on the new workshop, second of all the time needed to implement the 2nd option was two times more than the 1st one.

Fortunately, in this situation the rail production line of Voest Alpine Co. in Germany was presented for sale which belonged to the years 2000 to 2010 and ESCO placed an order for the MFG of three new stands for the end of rolling line (two stands for rail production and one stand for the production of rail on “H” beams up to size 300) made the reconstruction of heavy rolling mill 650 enter the implementation phase.

Based on the new standard for the production of rail numbered EN13674 (Revision 2011) 100% of the produced rail had to be tested on the aspects of dimension, surface and internal defects using special tools such as Laser equipment, Eddy Karnet & Ultrasonic. The dimensional standard precision in the aforesaid standard is much high precise, up to three tenth of millimeter. It is fortunate that today we witness the fruit of these long efforts and national wish and ESCO is capable of producing various types of rails (Railway, Metro & Crane) on steel grades; R200, R260, R22O, R320CR, R260MN up to 36 meters long.

At the end, he thanked all the parties involved in the implementation of rail project, specially the companies of Kuttner, Fara Tahghigh, Tam Iran kKhodro as well as all ESCO colleagues in Expansion Executive Senior Management, Plant Engineering, Senior Production, HSE, Purchase, Finance as well as Security Depts.