Ukraine to bring in up to 60 second-hand locomotives within six months

Ukrzaliznytsia plans to bring in up to 60 second-hand locomotives over the next six months, Ukraine's deputy minister for restoration, infrastructure and transport, Volodymyr Shemaiev, has said. The purchases are to be financed by a $100m World Bank grant under the RELINC project, as attacks keep taking traction out of service.

"Over the next six months, we plan to bring in up to 60 such units," Mr Shemaiev said, according to Ekonomichna Pravda. He added that the final number could vary depending on prices and the technical condition of the rolling stock on offer. The ministry has not named the countries or the classes it is looking at.

The scale of the losses explains the move. Ekonomichna Pravda puts the toll at 492 locomotives and 249 wagons damaged since the full-scale invasion began, while RailFreight.com, citing the Ukrainian government, reports 605 damaged locomotives. A government programme aims to bring 70% of the damaged fleet back into traffic, and UAH 542m (about €11m) is earmarked for repairs by the end of the year. Transport and infrastructure minister Mykola Kalashnyk has warned, according to RailFreight.com, that many units "cannot work after repairs due to systemic and significant damage".

Donations are also starting to arrive. Finland is to hand over ten Dv12 diesel locomotives with spare parts, which makes it the first country to give locomotives to Ukrzaliznytsia, as the infrastructure ministry announced on 23 October, according to RailFreight.com and Ekonomichna Pravda. Up to 15 more could come free of charge from other European partners, possibly including standard-gauge machines, and new locomotives from Alstom are expected in the first quarter of 2027.

The Finnish gift is a better technical fit than it might look. Finland's network uses 1 524 mm track, within a few millimetres of Ukraine's 1 520 mm gauge, so the Dv12 can run on Ukrainian lines without bogie changes; standard-gauge donations, by contrast, would be confined to the short 1 435 mm sections near the western border, such as the line we covered in our report on Ukraine's first EU-gauge railway. The Dv12 is an elderly class, built from the 1960s onwards, so these units buy time rather than modernise the fleet.

Buying second-hand is also a question of speed. A new-build order typically takes years from contract to delivery, whereas used locomotives can be refurbished and moved within months, which matters for a railway that is losing traction faster than factories can build it. The trade-off is maintenance: a mixed fleet of donated, leased and second-hand classes multiplies spare-parts lines and driver training needs, and the ministry has given no detail yet on how it will manage that.

The next milestones are the first Finnish deliveries and the selection of the used units under the World Bank grant, with the Alstom locomotives due in early 2027.

Sources: Ekonomichna Pravda, October 2026; RailFreight.com, 2 November 2026.

Photo: VR Dv12 diesel locomotive in Tornio, Finland, 22 September 2020 — Mikko J. Putkonen, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

Article written with the help of artificial intelligence from the sources cited, reviewed by the TrainsNews editorial team before publication.