Diesel Loco Shed, Tondiarpet
Diesel Loco Shed, Tondiarpet is a motive power depot performing locomotive maintenance and repair facility for diesel locomotives of the Indian Railways. It is located near Tondiarpet railway station of the Southern Railway zone in the city of Chennai, Tamil Nadu and is one of the four diesel loco sheds of the Southern Railway, the others being at Ernakulam at Kochi, Erode and Golden Rock at Trichy.
History and developments
On 25 December 1971, the then Railway Minister, K. Hanumanthaiya, laid the foundation stone for the loco shed. After four years of construction, it was finally opened in 1975 with a total area of and covered area of. It initially homed YDM-4 class MG locomotives, and was once expanded in 1993 to hold Broad Gauge locomotives and again in 2000 to accommodate more than 100 locos.Tondiarpet diesel loco shed is located to the north of the station. The diesel shed was commissioned in October 1972. Earlier a steam shed used to exist with 14 WG locomotives, but this shed was decommissioned and subsequently demolished to make way for the diesel shed. The new diesel shed got a batch of WDS-4B diesel locomotives as its first locomotives. These locomotives were used for shunting in the marshalling yard at Tondiarpet, the goods sheds at Royapuram, Salt Cotaurs, and the coaching depot at Basin Bridge in Chennai division. later the number of WDS-4B locomotives was increased to 64 for meeting increasing demand in Trichi, Palakkad, Bangalore, Thiruvananthapuram, Mysore divisions and ICF, Perambur. As the WDS-4 fleet began to reach the end of their serviceable life, WDM-7 locomotives were transferred from Ernakulam and put into service on both passenger and yard shunting work. In April 2007, mainline WDM2-model from Erode locomotives were additionally inducted for hauling goods. Currently, the shed holds 9 WDG-3A, 14 WDM-3A, 18 WDS-6, 8 WDG-4 and 6 WDG-4D
The shed has a total area of 75,000 sq m, including a covered area of 6,652 sq m, and has a capacity of 50 locomotives. The shed employs about 378 persons.
The shed was recently given an increase in its horsepower, with the allotment of three WDG-4 locomotives, transferred from Ponmalai Golden Rock, thereby marking Chennai Division's first three EMD locomotives. As of November 2025, eleven more WDG-4 locomotives have been allotted to the shed by transferring them from various sheds, totalling the count to fourteen EMD locos.
Operations
The shed, headed by Senior Divisional Mechanical Engineer, has about 750 employees in different ranks in the day-to-day operations of the shed, which include periodical overhaul, maintenance and repair works. The locos of this shed were thoroughly traverses over entire South India for passenger and freight services. Like all locomotive sheds, TNP does regular maintenance, overhaul and repair including painting and washing of locomotives. It not only attends to locomotives housed at TNP but to ones coming in from other sheds as well. It has four pit lines for loco repair.Locomotives of Tondiarpet DLS along with Erode and Golden Rock DLS were the regular links for all trains running through Tamil Nadu, even though widespread electrification of railway lines started in Tamil Nadu. TNP locomotives used to be predominantly the regular links for trains traveling on the Konkan Railway as well. As more and more railway lines in Tamil Nadu were electrified, TNP started losing links to electric locomotives, mainly WAP-1, WAP-4, WAG-7 and WAP-7 locomotives from the Erode, Arakkonam and Royapuram electric locomotive sheds.