Indian locomotive class WCAM-2

The Indian locomotive class WCAM-2 is a class of dual-power AC/DC series electric locomotives that was developed in 1995 by Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited used in the Indian Railways system.

A total of 20 WCAM-2 were built at BHEL between 1995 and 1996, which made them the most numerous class of mainline dual-power AC-DC electric locomotive.

Many of CR's WCAM-2 locos were not used much in DC zones (exceptions were the CR / Bombay Port Trust's Wadala marshalling yard a portion of which has DC traction, and for hauling the Punjab Mail in the late 1990s) as they delivered very poor performance in DC mode and on CR's heavy grades.

Although these locos have the same traction motors as the WAM 4 and WCAM 1, the power output from the WCAM-2 locos is higher than for the WAM-4 and WCAM-1 because in those models the traction motors were underfed (3,460 kVA transformer in contrast to the 5,400 kVA transformer for WCAM-2) and did not yield their potential maximum power.

Under AC traction, the WCAM-2 locos operate with all six motors in parallel (this has been enforced by modifications to these locos), while in DC mode they also operate in the all-series and series-parallel (2S 3P, i.e., three series-pairs of motors in parallel) configurations.

of the WCAM-2 locos were originally leased to IR, ownership remaining with BHEL, the manufacturers.