Another segment of the North – South Railway will be put into operation

After a four-year delay and, at least, R$430 million spent to correct design mistakes, the North-South Railway will put into operation one more rail segment.

As Estado ascertained, in the next few days the 855 kilometers between the cities of Anápolis (Goiás) and Palmas (Tocantins) will receive its first commercial load transport. VLI, a logistic company, made an agreement with the state-owned company Valec, which owns the North-South railway, to use the new segment to transport the 18 new locomotives that were acquired by the logistic company.

The machines, produced on Sete Lagoas (Minas Gerais) by Caterpillar, will be transported by trucks until Anápolis. They will go through the North-South rails and access the segment of 720 km from the railway, where VLI operates, between Palmas and Açailandia (Maranhão). Its destiny is the city of Imperatriz (Maranhão), where the locomotives will be equipped with onboard equipment and, finally, will be ready for use. The information was confirmed by Valec board and by VLI.

Pilot project. According to Valec, the first North-South agreement will be a “pilot project” for the new railway services model, “open access”. This model will allow the state-owned company to sell the railway load carrying capacity to several companies interested on using the rails instead of passing on the capacity for only one company through a public concession as it has been done so far. The state-owned company wants, from this “pilot project” on, to elaborate an agreement model to its relationship with the future Independent Railway Operators (OFI) that will use the North-South rails.

VLI informed that it has already expressed its interest on qualify itself as an independent operator on the new railway segment and that “it has been negotiating with Valec to a future capacity purchase that results on the transport of other loads on North-South (Anápolis – Palmas), following the model established by the area’s new regulatory framework”.

Two companies specialized on load transport – Brado Logística, from Santos (São Paulo) and Tora Transportes, from Contagem (Minas Gerais) – have already delivered to Agência Nacional de Transportes Terrestres (ANTT – National Agency of Terrestrial Transports) a request to operate on the railway, as published by Estado last month.

The arrival of 18 locomotives practically doubles VLI capacity on North-South railway. The company has nowadays 19 operating machines. According to the company, the capacity expansion has as purpose to enlarge the loads transport – grains, fuel, pig iron and cellulose – on the “Center-North railway”, which connects Palmas to Porto de Itaqui, on Maranhão’s coast (a distance of 1.6 km).

VLI operation on the new segment between Anápolis and Palmas may happen through a partnership with Granol, an enterprise that have just finished the installation of a granary at Anápolis. This structure is used to transport the grains from the warehouses to the cars. VLI informed that they “do not have yet a specific contract to transport grains at the North-South railway”.