TÜDEMSAŞ

Railway workshop and steam locomotive production

The works opened in 1939 as Sivas Cer Atölyesi (Sivas traction workshop) to repair TCDD's steam locomotives and goods wagons. It began building new freight wagons in 1953 and was renamed Sivas Demiryolu Fabrikaları (Sivas Railway Factories) in 1958.

In 1961 the works built the Bozkurt steam locomotive, numbered 56202, one of the first steam locomotives manufactured domestically in Turkey. Its contemporary counterpart, Karakurt, was built at the Eskişehir railway works. Bozkurt was subsequently preserved at the Sivas complex.

The factory also participated in the 1961 Devrim automobile project by casting engine blocks. The Sivas works museum preserves moulds associated with the project.

Reorganization and freight wagon manufacturing

The Sivas works was reorganized in 1975 as Sivas Demiryolu Makinaları Müessesesi (SİDEMAS). In 1986 it became TÜDEMSAŞ, a TCDD subsidiary with its own corporate identity. As steam traction disappeared from the network, its work increasingly concentrated on manufacturing, overhauling and repairing freight wagons and associated components.

TÜDEMSAŞ manufactured several types of freight wagon, including container and platform wagons, ore wagons and tank wagons, alongside spare parts and bogie assemblies. According to a Turkish government industry report issued in 2018, the factory had manufactured more than 22,000 new freight wagons and had carried out over 345,000 wagon maintenance, repair or overhaul operations by that time.

The Sivas factory exported 240 tank wagons for petroleum transport to Iraq in 2002. In 2011 it introduced robotic bogie welding equipment. Manufacture of freight wagons meeting the European Technical Specifications for Interoperability (TSI) began in 2015, followed by maintenance under an entity in charge of maintenance (ECM) management system in 2016.

National freight wagon programme

In 2017 TÜDEMSAŞ presented a new-generation freight wagon developed under Turkey's national freight wagon programme. The project involved design, testing and certification work as well as local manufacture.

Turkey's railway vehicle type-approval register records TÜDEMSAŞ as the manufacturer of both Sggmrs and Zacens wagon types approved in 2017. This provides independent confirmation of the company's certified freight-wagon products.

The decision published in the Turkish Official Gazette on 4 March 2020 brought TÜDEMSAŞ, TÜLOMSAŞ and TÜVASAŞ together under the new state railway manufacturer TÜRASAŞ. The successor company was registered on 30 July 2020, when the three predecessor companies lost their separate legal identities. The former TÜDEMSAŞ facilities became the Sivas Regional Directorate of TÜRASAŞ.