Steam locomotive sheds used to exist at Royapuram (RPM) and Basin Bridge (for Madras) until the late 1970s. After Southern Railway set a deadline to eliminate all steam locomotive operations by 1985, a push was given towards establishing electric locomotion as the primary motive power, and the Steam locomotive shed was decommissioned. To meet the needs of exponentially increasing rail traffic on the new continuous broad-gauge lines from Chennai to Kanyakumari and Palakkad with the completion of gauge conversion, the steam shed site was selected by Indian railways for a new electric locomotive shed. But in 2006, the
Southern Railway planned to lease a portion of the terminus to the corporate sector for developing cement and fertilizer depots. When this move was opposed, the railway allotted 155.5 million for
locomotive maintenance shed in 2007. The foundation stone for the electric loco shed, which will be the Southern Railway's third one after
Arakkonam and
Erode, was laid on 25 January 2007. The loco shed was planned with an initial capacity of 50 locomotives, which would be augmented to 100 and then to 150 in phases with an investment of 450 million, and would have an inspection bay for undertaking scheduled inspections and lifting bay for undertaking both minor and major repairs. A service building for maintenance of various equipment of locomotives was planned, which will have testing and overhauling facilities. New Electric shed was inaugurated in 2010. Initially, the shed handed only
WAP-1 and
WAP-4 class locomotives, but gradually were allocated WAP-7. The first loco to be homed at RPM was the WAP-1 '22000' which was also the first WAP-1 of India. Subsequently, more
WAP-1s were transferred from
Arakkonam and then the shed started receiving
WAP-4s from
Erode. The shed got its first
WAP-7 numbered '30319' in September 2012. The shed also received new WAP-4 from CLW. In 2016, all
WAP-1s were transferred back to
Arakkonam to make way for the newly allocated
WAP-7s and then in 2017 all
WAP-4s were transferred back to
Erode. By July 2018, Royapuram became a pure 3 Phase only Shed housing only
WAP-7 locomotives. This shed have
WAP-1 and
WAP-4 locomotives, but now
WAP-1s are moved to
Arakkonam shed and
WAP-4s are moved to
Erode shed. == Operations ==