Indian Railways plans to implement  Common Rail Electronic Direct Fuel Injection (CREDI) in a bid to reduce the consumption of Fuel in its Diesel Locomotives. Once this technology is implemented, it would reduce the total consumption by 30% resulting in an annual saving of Rs 500 Crores.
In the common rail systems, fuel at a high pressure (1600 bars) is injected into the cylinder by using a magnetic valve.
These types of systems are being used on all road diesel vehicles including passenger cars and have helped reduce fuel consumption and emissions of harmful pollutants from these vehicles.
It is possible to have multiple injections in the cylinder thereby reducing stress on the cylinder parts and reduce fuel consumption and emissions at the same time. Common Rail technology has been hailed as break-through invention for diesel engines world over and has been responsible for dramatically reducing the fuel consumption of diesel vehicles.
Use of Common Rail systems has resulted in increasing the population of diesel passengers’ cars in Europe by more than 50%. European emissions laws are considered to be one of the most stringent across the globe.
The Research Development Standard Organisation (RDSO), the research wing of Indian Railways is in the process of developing  Common Rail Electronic Direct Fuel Injection (CReDI) system for its fleet of diesel locomotives.Indian Railways has taken a global lead in starting development of the CReDI for its fleet of diesel locomotives.
For this purpose, an Indian manufacturer has established a joint venture with a reputed firm from Switzerland for design and development of the system under overall supervision of RDSO. Final testing of the system will be done at the large bore engine laboratory of RDSO. Fuel savings in the range of 3 to 4 per cent and emissions reductions by about 20-30% are expected. Once the systems are implemented on the complete fleet of locomotives, savings will be about Rs. 500-600 crore annually.
In the long-term, complete manufacture, assembly and testing of the CREDI system shall be done in India placing India among the few countries possessing design and manufacturing capabilities for such sophisticated systems for large bore engines like locomotives, marine, trucks and battle tanks etc. Besides Railways many other Industries of India stand to gain from these developments.