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Ethio-Djibouti Railway

Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul

The overhaul happens here now.

EDR has built complete in-house Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul capability for the Addis Ababa–Djibouti corridor. Locomotives, bogies, wagons and coaches are stripped, rebuilt, tested and returned to service by our own engineers, in our own depots.

Partner with our MRO divisionSee our capabilities
935
locomotives in service
1.3M4M
tonnes of annual carrying capacity
9%50%
of Ethiopia’s national exports
11%25%
of national imports

In-country overhaul. Zero foreign shipping. Fleet availability we control ourselves.

EDR’s own figures, covering the two years since the company’s current leadership took office.

Built by our own hands

For most of the history of heavy rail in this region, an overhaul meant a departure. Rolling stock was loaded, shipped overseas, and waited its turn in a foreign workshop. The cost was paid in hard currency. The wait was counted in months. And the knowledge stayed where the work was done.

That era has ended.

EDR engineers and technicians now overhaul traction equipment and diesel prime movers, rebuild bogies and wheelsets, and fully restore freight wagons and passenger coaches, at our own depots, on our own corridor. Nothing leaves the country. Nothing waits for a berth on a vessel.

Every piece of maintenance and rolling stock work is now done entirely by our own hands. Not supervised locally. Not partially transferred. Done here, by our own engineers and technicians, to our own standard.

A large group of EDR workshop staff in high-visibility vests and overalls listening to a colleague inside a maintenance hall, rows of wheelsets stacked behind them
The shop floor the capability actually sits in. Wheelsets waiting their turn are stacked along the back wall.

  • Sovereign capability

    The competence to overhaul a traction system or rebuild a bogie now lives inside EDR, held by engineers we employ and train. Capability retained is capability that compounds — every overhaul completed makes the next one faster.

  • Time returned to service

    Removing international shipping, customs and foreign workshop queues from the overhaul cycle takes months out of the turnaround. Rolling stock spends that time earning on the corridor instead of waiting in a port.

  • Strategic autonomy

    Fleet availability is no longer hostage to a foreign schedule, a shipping lane, or a foreign currency allocation. EDR plans its own maintenance calendar and meets it with its own resources.

Core MRO capabilities

Four disciplines, delivered end to end: heavy overhaul, running gear, vehicle restoration, and the preventive work that keeps vehicles out of the workshop in the first place.

Complete heavy overhaul of both fleets: the 25 kV electric locomotives that haul the corridor, and the diesel shunting locomotives that work the terminals.

Electric traction — main-line fleet

  • Traction motor strip-down, rewinding, rebalancing and test
  • Traction converter and inverter overhaul, power module replacement
  • Main transformer inspection, oil analysis and reconditioning
  • Pantograph and high-voltage roof equipment rebuild
  • Auxiliary converters, battery and charging systems
  • Cab electronics, train control interface and on-board signalling equipment
  • Insulation resistance and high-potential testing, load-bank commissioning

Diesel shunting fleet

  • Full prime mover strip-down and rebuild
  • Cylinder head and block reconditioning, liner and piston replacement
  • Fuel injection system overhaul and calibration
  • Turbocharger and cooling group service
  • Transmission and final drive rebuild

Outcome. A locomotive returned to full duty cycle with documented test results, a complete overhaul record, and a reset maintenance clock.

Beyond maintenance: we build track, too

EDR’s engineering capability did not stop at restoring what we already owned. The same teams who brought locomotives and wagons back into service are now laying new track — extending the network’s capacity with our own crews, our own methods, and our own timeline.

Rail-anchored sleeper laying

Rail-anchored sleeper laying has become a central technique in our infrastructure programme. Rather than positioning sleepers independently and then threading rail onto them, the rail itself is used to carry, align and set each sleeper in sequence. The method reduces handling, holds gauge and spacing more consistently as work advances, and lets a crew progress further in a working shift than conventional placement allows.

We are now applying it to the Galan Multipurpose Port and Sabata Container Yard expansion, where it is compressing the construction timeline on a project that directly increases the corridor’s freight handling capacity. What matters here is not only the speed. It is that the technique is being planned, supervised and executed in-house, on a live commercial project, by EDR engineers.

  • A crane holding a long stack of concrete sleepers suspended above newly laid track, with a line of workers in high-visibility vests alongside
    Sleepers coming off the crane onto the rail that will carry and set them.
  • EDR crews laying track across a container yard, with stacks of shipping containers and floodlight masts behind them
    New track going in across a working container yard, on a live commercial site.

One engineering organization, two mandates

Maintenance and construction draw on the same people, the same standards and the same discipline. An engineer who has stripped and rebuilt a bogie understands what track geometry does to running gear. A crew that lays sleepers to a controlled tolerance is building the conditions that keep wheelsets and rail wearing evenly for years afterwards.

Holding both capabilities inside EDR means the corridor is maintained and extended by an organization that answers the whole asset — not by contractors handing work between them.

Depots built for heavy work

EDR’s maintenance infrastructure was designed for a 759 km electrified corridor carrying both passenger and freight traffic, with facilities positioned along the line so that vehicles reach a workshop without leaving the network.

A technician in orange overalls and gloves working an angle grinder against a railway wheelset, sparks arcing off the wheel
Wheelset work in the component shop. Running gear is the most precision-dependent thing the depots handle.

Facility capability

  1. 01Heavy lifting roads with synchronised jacks for full body lift
  2. 02Overhead travelling cranes rated for bogie and traction equipment handling
  3. 03Bogie drop table and dedicated strip-down bays
  4. 04Underfloor wheel lathe for re-profiling without wheelset removal
  5. 05Wheel press and axle assembly facility
  6. 06Component workshops: traction motor rewind, brake, HVAC, electrical, pneumatic
  7. 07Non-destructive testing bay with certified NDT personnel
  8. 08Blast, prime and paint booths with extraction and environmental controls
  9. 09Calibrated tooling and torque management under scheduled recalibration
  10. 10Commissioning and test road for post-overhaul running and load testing
  11. 11Controlled parts store with traceable component history

  • Traceability

    Every safety-critical component carries a recorded history: what was fitted, when, by whom, and against which test result.

  • Certified welding

    Structural welding on bogie frames, underframes and bodyshells carried out to railway welding standard by qualified welders under qualified supervision.

  • Qualified inspection

    Non-destructive testing performed and signed off by personnel certified to recognised international standard.

  • Maintenance governance

    Maintenance managed under a documented system covering planning, execution, competence and continuous improvement.

The capability is built. Now we put it to work.

EDR’s MRO division was created to keep our own corridor running. It is now capable of more than that — and we are open to conversations with operators who need heavy maintenance capacity in the region, and with manufacturers and technology partners looking for a long-term engineering base in the Horn of Africa.

Built by our own hands. Backed by our own standards. Open for partnership.