‘The country has been experiencing a shortage of open wagons for three years now because of the industrial production growth. Uralvagonzavod makes 25,000 to 26,000 open wagons a month, but the shortage will probably still be felt for another four to five years,’ Deputy Director of Pervaya Gruzovaya Kompaniya Mikhail Kryazhevskikh said in the course of a conference in Yekaterinburg.

‘Some people think we take and use up all the open wagons, but Russian Railways Public Company actually operates 257,737 wagons, only 47,000 of which we will get to own. The company has yielded 46,000 open wagons to us so far, so we are still waiting for another 1,000 cars. These are expected to become ours by the end of September. All the claims Russian Railways Public Company and Sverdlovsk Region Railways’ workers make regarding their incapability of operating freight because of the lack of open wagons are not quite true. Russian Railways Public Company still owns 210,000 open wagons,’ he added.