Russian company repairing Armenian trains in Tbilisi

The owner of Armenian Railways, South Caucasus Railways, which is itself a daughter company of Russian Railways, is repairing its trains in the Tbilisi railway yard. The pro-Government Armenian newspaper Aiots Ashkhar has made a huge scandal out of this. The newspaper has accused the Russian company of wasting investment funds on buying cars and apartments in Yerevan and paying an inordinately large amount of money for the repair of the trains. The director of the South Caucasus Railways, Aleksander Kuznetsov, denied these allegations at a press conference on December 2.

Aiots Ashkhar claimed that the real cost of the repair works was supposed to be USD 200,000, but South Caucasus Railways is repairing the trains at a cost of USD 1.8 million. In response to this, Kuznetsov noted that the cost of new trains ranges from USD 4 million to USD 6 million, and the cost of individual carriages from USD 80,000 to USD 120,000. “In fact repairing a train costs 1/3 of the price of a new one. I think we benefit, because most of the 42 trains owned by Armenian Railways are not functioning,” Kuznetsov noted.

Kuznetsov said that the body of each train and then its remaining parts have been sent for repair. The repaired trains are guaranteed to last for 35 years.