Sri Lanka’s railway has fewer working locomotives than it needs to run its normal services. But the latest shortage is only part of the story. Official records show that engines have been sitting out of service for years, while questions about repairs, spare parts and the purchase of new locomotives have remained unresolved.
There are 98 locomotives in Sri Lanka Railways’ fleet.
The number that matters to passengers, however, is 50.
That is roughly how many are currently available for operation.
The Railway Department says it needs 74 locomotives to maintain its services under normal conditions. In other words, the railway is trying to run its present network with about two dozen fewer engines than it says it needs.
It is not difficult to see what that means on the ground. When there are fewer locomotives available, there is less room for a breakdown, a major repair or even routine maintenance. A problem with one engine can quickly become a problem with an entire service.
But there is a more interesting question behind the latest figures.
What happened to the other 48?
The answer is not simply that they are “broken”. Some are under repair. Some have been waiting for repairs for long periods. Others may be reaching the point where the question is no longer whether they can be repaired, but whether repairing them makes financial sense at all.
And Sri Lanka has been aware of this problem for years.
Some engines have been waiting for years
A 2023 audit of the Department of Railways found that 47 M-class locomotives and 31 S-class locomotives had been taken out of service for repairs.
The worrying part was not the number alone.
The Auditor General found that these engines had been sitting in running sheds or at the Ratmalana workshop for periods ranging from one year to seven years without being repaired.
That finding makes today’s shortage look rather different.
If an engine is unavailable for a few weeks because of a mechanical problem, that is normal railway maintenance. An engine remaining out of service for several years is something else. It represents a piece of public equipment that is technically part of the fleet but is not actually helping to move passengers or goods.
The audit recommended that the Railway Department prepare a proper repair plan and complete the outstanding work.
There is little comfort in knowing that the recommendation was made. The current shortage suggests that the underlying problem has not disappeared.
Parliament’s own examination of the railway tells a similar story.
In May 2025, the Committee on Public Accounts disclosed that 63 railway engines and 40 power sets had been parked at railway premises in Ratmalana for periods ranging from one to eight years. MPs subsequently visited the Ratmalana Railway Maintenance Yard, where they found large areas occupied by machinery and equipment that needed to be removed.
The committee also noted that some railway machinery was not being stored appropriately and that certain equipment had been purchased in excessive quantities.
That is an extraordinary amount of equipment to have sitting outside productive use in a country where the railway is constantly short of capacity.
Parliament’s account of the Ratmalana inspection →The spare-parts problem is part of the story
There is another reason engines remain out of service, and it is less dramatic than a new procurement deal but probably more important to the everyday operation of the railway.
Spare parts.
The Railway Department’s own administration report said financial restrictions had affected the purchase of locomotive spare parts. It also described the reconditioning and reuse of old parts.
That may be understandable when a department is trying to operate under financial pressure. But there is a limit to how much can be achieved by keeping old equipment going with old components.
The longer a locomotive waits for a part, the longer it remains unavailable. The fewer locomotives available for service, the harder the remaining fleet has to work.
And Sri Lanka’s fleet is not exactly young.
Some locomotives still operating in the system date back several decades. That means maintenance is not a side issue for the railway. It is central to whether the system can function at all.
The problem has been building for years
Then there is the M11 purchase
The most uncomfortable part of the story concerns locomotives that were not bought decades ago.
They were bought in 2019.
Ten M11 locomotives were purchased at approximately Rs.765 million each. That puts the original value of the ten-engine batch at about Rs.7.65 billion.
According to the Auditor General’s report, five of those ten engines were subsequently taken out of service and sent for repairs.
Approximate original purchase value of the 10-locomotive batch.
The audit also raised concerns about the technical suitability of recently purchased M-class engines. Its recommendation was straightforward: future locomotive purchases should take greater account of the technical requirements of Sri Lanka’s railway system.
This is where the story moves beyond a shortage of engines.
Buying a locomotive is not the same thing as acquiring useful railway capacity.
A new engine only becomes valuable to the public when it can run reliably on the country’s tracks, can be maintained locally, can obtain the parts it needs and can remain in service for a reasonable period.
If half of a ten-engine purchase ends up waiting for repairs, the original price is no longer the only number worth examining.
There is the repair bill. There is the cost of downtime. There is the loss of the capacity the engines were supposed to provide. And there is the question of whether the equipment was properly evaluated before it was purchased.
The Auditor General has already raised some of those questions. Parliament has also sought information on the procurement and maintenance expenditure relating to the M11 engines.
Read the Auditor General’s findings on Sri Lanka Railways →The fleet is shrinking while the requirement remains
The latest figures show 98 locomotives in the fleet and around 50 in operation.
In 2024, the department had 53 locomotives available for operation.
So the problem has not been solved by simply waiting for the fleet to recover.
The department’s requirement of 74 operational locomotives is also important. It tells us that the present situation is not being described as normal by the railway itself.
There is a gap of 24 locomotives between what the department says it needs and what it currently has available.
There is a similar problem with the power sets used mainly for office train services. The department has 242, but only 118 are currently operational. Its normal requirement is 193.
Put together, the figures point to a railway that has considerably more equipment on its books than it can actually put to work.
And that is where the public loses
The impact does not appear in the railway’s inventory as neatly as a locomotive does.
A passenger who arrives late for work because a train was cancelled does not record the lost hour as a railway expense. A student who has to find another way home does not appear in the Department’s maintenance accounts. A commuter who changes from rail to a bus adds another vehicle to an already crowded road network.
These are indirect costs, but they are real.
For a country that relies heavily on public transport, railway reliability is an economic issue as much as a transport issue.
That is why the question of the 48 unavailable locomotives deserves more than another announcement about buying new engines.
Those are not unreasonable questions. They are basic questions about the condition of a public asset.
Sri Lanka may not need another fleet on paper
There will inevitably be pressure to buy more locomotives. With only 50 available against a stated requirement of 74, the argument for additional capacity is obvious.
But there is a danger in treating procurement as the automatic answer.
If the railway cannot keep the equipment it already owns operational, another purchase does not solve the maintenance problem. It can simply make the fleet larger while leaving the same weaknesses underneath it.
The better starting point would be an honest inventory.
Take the 98 locomotives one by one.
Say where each one is.
Say why it is unavailable.
Say how much its repair will cost.
Say when it can return.
And if it cannot economically return, say that too.
A railway cannot run on numbers in a report
There is something revealing about the current situation.
Sri Lanka has 98 locomotives.
It needs 74 to run normally.
Yet only about 50 are working.
Somewhere between the workshop, the spare-parts store, the procurement file and the railway timetable, 24 locomotives’ worth of operating capacity has disappeared.
The Auditor General warned about engines sitting for years. Parliament found dozens more parked at Ratmalana. The Railway Department has acknowledged spare-parts constraints. And the latest fleet figures show that the shortage remains.
The railway’s immediate problem is therefore not just finding another locomotive.
It is finding out why so many of the locomotives Sri Lanka already paid for cannot be found on the tracks.
Until that is answered, another procurement announcement may only add another number to the fleet.
What passengers need is not a bigger number in the railway’s inventory.
They need more trains actually leaving the station.
