{"id":410850,"date":"2026-04-22T18:45:51","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T08:45:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/?p=70731"},"modified":"2026-04-22T18:45:51","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T08:45:51","slug":"russian-investigation-sounds-the-alarm-over-rolling-stock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=410850","title":{"rendered":"Russian investigation sounds the alarm over rolling stock"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>More than a tenth of all Russian rail freight wagons are currently out of use. Wagon owners have seen their incomes collapse, which means that there is no money to maintain the fleet. In order to turn things around, the rate of repairs would need to double.<\/strong><br \/>\n<span id=\"more-70731\"><\/span>Russia currently has some 158,000 wagons unfit for use on the railways. That equals around <a href=\"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/railfreight\/2026\/04\/10\/11-of-russian-freight-wagons-unusable-amid-maintenance-crisis\/\"  rel=\"noopener\">11% of the entire fleet<\/a>. In the past year or so, the situation has dramatically worsened. In June 2025, the number of wagons awaiting repairs was still 86,000 \u2014 around half of what it is now. These numbers come from the Russian Institute of Problems of Natural Monopolies (IPEM), which published a rail market report.<\/p>\n<div class=\"flourish-embed flourish-chart\" data-src=\"visualisation\/28643670\"><script src=\"https:\/\/public.flourish.studio\/resources\/embed.js\"><\/script><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/public.flourish.studio\/visualisation\/28643670\/thumbnail\" width=\"100%\" alt=\"visualization\" \/><\/noscript><\/div>\n<p>The underlying reason for the increase in faulty wagons is a 70% reduction in wagon rental prices in 2025. Wagon owners have seen their incomes evaporate, and now there is not enough to pay for maintenance. As a result, the volume of planned repairs contracted from nearly 40,000 monthly in late 2024 to 23,000 in February 2026. This is a decline of 80%.<\/p>\n<h2>A long way to go for improvement<\/h2>\n<p>February\u2019s rate of repairs is problematic for Russian rail freight. Maintenance facilities need to service 30,000 wagons per month to maintain the working fleet at its current size of 1.2 million units. To grow the working fleet again, Russian rail needs to repair 40,000 wagons.<\/p>\n<div class=\"flourish-embed flourish-chart\" data-src=\"story\/3655438\"><script src=\"https:\/\/public.flourish.studio\/resources\/embed.js\"><\/script><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/public.flourish.studio\/story\/3655438\/thumbnail\" width=\"100%\" alt=\"visualization\" \/><\/noscript><\/div>\n<p>That is a long way off from the numbers of earlier this year. For Russia, the good news is that increased demand for wagons has grown the planned number of repairs to 30,000 in March 2026.<\/p>\n<h2>Higher prices, more maintenance<\/h2>\n<p>However, notes IPEM, this growth takes place against the background of persistently low wagon rental rates that do not cover the expenses of wagon owners. In other words, the rolling stock companies are still making a loss. They might be anticipating an increase in prices, as IPEM projects that prices will grow by 10% to 20% over the course of the year.<\/p>\n<p>Figures on new wagons entering the markets are also disappointing, follows from IPEM data. In the first months of 2026, they declined by 46% compared to 2025. The prognosis for the rest of 2026 is that it will be 30% lower than the year prior with around 40,000 new wagons on the railways.<\/p>\n<div class=\"flourish-embed flourish-chart\" data-src=\"visualisation\/28629345\"><script src=\"https:\/\/public.flourish.studio\/resources\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/div>\n<div data-src=\"visualisation\/28629345\">\n<aside class=\"readmore\">\n<div class=\"readmore-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/railfreight\/2026\/04\/10\/11-of-russian-freight-wagons-unusable-amid-maintenance-crisis\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/file68wqtpvw8vcmmc2p5p3-128x128.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"readmore-thumbnail\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"readmore-info\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/railfreight\/2026\/04\/10\/11-of-russian-freight-wagons-unusable-amid-maintenance-crisis\/\" class=\"readmore-title\">11% of Russian freight wagons unusable amid maintenance crisis<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More than a tenth of all Russian rail freight wagons are currently out of use. Wagon owners have seen their incomes collapse, which means that\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11313,471,78,47,180,309],"tags":[12634],"class_list":["post-410850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-depth","category-news","category-rail-freight","category-rail-news","category-rolling-stock","category-russia","tag-railfreight"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=410850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":410856,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410850\/revisions\/410856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=410850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=410850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=410850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}