Electric Loco Shed, Itarsi

Steam locomotives used to exist at Itarsi until the late 1970s.[5][6] After Central Railway (former, now under West Central Railways) set a deadline to eliminate all steam locomotive operations by 1990, a push was given towards establishing electric locomotion as the primary motive power, and the steam locomotive sheds were decommissioned.[7] To meet the needs of exponentially increasing rail traffic on the new continuous broad-gauge lines from Central Madhya Pradesh to rest of India with the completion of gauge conversion, the Itarsi was selected by Indian Railways for a new electric locomotive shed.[8]

With the completion of Bhopal-Khandwa Electrification in the year 1990-1991, new electric locomotive shed was inaugurated in July 1991 with 15 Indian locomotive class WAG-2 which stayed until late 2000, when they were withdrawn from service. It later got a large fleet of WAM-4 locos from Electric Loco Shed, Ajni and WAG-5 from other sheds but later some of these were then moved to other sheds and now all WAM-4 are withdrawn from service/scrapped. All WAG-5 locos are either transferred to New Katni ELS, Katni DLS, Itarsi DLS or scrapped. New WAP-7 locos were acquired in 2018. In November 2020, Itarsi ELS got its first WAG-9 locomotive.[9][10]

Being one of the three electric engine sheds in West Central Railway, various major and minor maintenance schedules of electric locomotives are carried out here. It has the sanctioned augmented capacity of 175 locomotives units. Beyond the sanctioned capacity, this shed houses a total of 171 engine units, including 19 WAP-4, 55 WAP-7 and 97 WAG-9 and the holding numbers are going to increase in the near future as new locos have been allotted by Railway board to ET shed. Like all locomotive sheds, ET does regular maintenance, overhaul and repair including painting and washing of locomotives.[11] It handled prestigious trains like the Amarkantak Express,[12] Rani Kamlapati-Jabalpur Janshatabdi Express,[13] Humsafar Express[14] and many more mail express and superfast trains. It formerly used to hold the largest fleet of WAP-4 locomotives all over the Indian Railways but now a major chunk of the WAP-4 locomotives has been transferred to other sheds.[15] Itarsi based WAG-9 locomotives perform banking duties with fully loaded freight trains at Budni ghats.

Logo Mark of Electric Loco Shed, Itarsi

Itarsi ELS has its own logo and stencils. It is written on loco's body side as well as front & back side.