Transnet CEO Michelle Phillips has expressed optimism that some locomotives that have been standing idle for years amid a long-running dispute with the China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC) may be returned to service.

This, after the State-owned company secured a court order to attach components that have hitherto been held in warehouses.

Phillips told delegates to the Joburg Indaba that the attachment order was in effect and followed an earlier court case in which Transnet succeeded in securing an interdict preventing CRRC from selling or relocating the spare parts it was holding for Transnet at two Pretoria warehouses.

She said a full inventory of the parts was currently under way, with some having been held for locomotives that were not built by the time CRRC's contract, which featured heavily during the commission of inquiry into State capture, was declared "irregular and illegal".

Other components were required for the maintenance of locomotives that had already been integrated into the Transnet fleet.

While there had been various attempts to settle the matter, as was done with other original-equipment manufacturers (OEMs) whose contracts were also declared illegal, concurrent disputes with the South African Revenue Service and the South African Reserve Bank have left the CRRC dispute unresolved.

As a result, hundreds of locomotives that require maintenance have been rendered inoperable, owing to the fact that the spare parts were not being released.

"So, the hope is that once we have completed [the inventory] process, we would then be able to use some of those parts to get some of these long-standing locomotives back onto the network."

Transnet has appointed BT Alstom, which is also delivering new locomotives of its own to Transnet, as a "step-in" OEM to assist it in returning the long-standing CRRC locomotives to service.

"We have, in fact, put some of those locomotives into the network already.

"The challenge has been that, as we are putting locomotives in, some of them are coming out, particularly the Chinese ones … [and] the hope is that these parts that we've now attached can be used to get even more locomotives into the system," Phillips said.