August 25, 2015. Lyudinovsky Locomotive Plant/LTZ (a member enterprise of Sinara Transport Machines) was issued a compliance certificate that states its TG16M main-line locomotives meet the Federal Railway Transport Register requirements, Sinara Group reports.

‘This is a new page in the plant’s history. Customers only used to know LTZ as a shunter manufacturer, but now main-line locos open new markets and therefore offer a promising future for the plant and the town. This will also make Kaluga Region a leading railway vehicle-manufacturing area,’ says Governor of Kaluga Region Anatoly Artamonov.

Sinara Transport Machines Director-General Evgeniy Gritsenko says they started developing a main-line locomotive for Sakhalin Railways as early as 2012. Just two years later, the first two locos were produced and subjected to trial runs. The new vehicle got all the best feedback from the testing experts, so now the holding plans to produce a pilot loco, get it certified, and launch mass production in 2017.