Indian Railways Thread

Vadivel · Post by **Vadivel** » 18 Jun 2015 10:47

The only problem i see with Jugadd (at least the way other posters have being describing it) is that process quality cannot be maintained. Jugaad in a sense is troubleshooting/solving a specific problem to that environment/situation (which might be unique, one time occurrence, non-sequential etc), so each time a different set of Jugaad is needed to solve a issue. If you process orient the jugaad for quality standards, time of delivery, safety etc will it work, is it still called a Jugaad. If the above can be in-fact be achieved, then what is difference between Jugaad, reverse enginnering, improvising, innovating?

Vadivel · Post by **Vadivel** » 18 Jun 2015 10:49

chetak wrote:
Theo,

You may have not clearly understood the meaning of jugad.

It does not mean cheating or sly use of illegal means.

It generally means a dynamic and situational aware response to an emerging situation so as to fully meet intended targets, be it quality related or on time delivery related. This is as opposed to a rigid, inflexible, hide bound, by the strict rule book sort of affair. In the case you have depicted it's best to follow the rulebook rigidly. There is no room for jugad here. In many cases, jugad is possible without affecting critical delivery or quality parameters.

What you have depicted is patently illegal and criminal by any yardstick. The risks are life threatening and criminal liability will attach to the contractor performing this operation. The operator neither seems trained, qualified or validated for the process he is using. Obviously quality and risk issues are very far from his mind.

Ok Chetek has already answered my previous post.

niran · Post by **niran** » 18 Jun 2015 11:31

nandakumar wrote:Wouldn't SS drums be required even otherwise? These washing machines are designed to work with hard water which is often the case in households without municipal water supply.

the churned butter will have to be heat treated for hours before it turns into Ghee (clarified butter for the uninitiated) why wud a farmer produce ghee in place of butter? Ghee have self life in years and currently sold at the rate of 800-1600 INR/litre bitter have self life in hours. the heat kills the undesirable organism.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 22 Jun 2015 06:26

if you look at the compilation, you see as reflected in earlier discussions, about the both the tracks and the coaches (wheels and shocks design) that matters most for speed.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 22 Jun 2015 07:12

lack of third track for bypassing speeding trains visible here.

nash · Post by **nash** » 22 Jun 2015 18:55

India's first air-conditioned DEMU train launched

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/sli ... n=ETFbMain

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 22 Jun 2015 19:55

Back in the day the alternative to the TGV the French explored was this amazing creature called the Aerotrain. Using jet engines and Fan Blowers. At speed the vehicle used ground effect air pressure to literally fly above the rail. Ultimately it was too noisy for operations. Oddly fuel consumption was not too bad. The demonstration tracks still exist.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 22 Jun 2015 21:03

the went about it the wrong way. a recessed stealthy engine like nirbhay with a geared turbofan would work much better with todays tech

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 22 Jun 2015 21:38

Even the original TGV prototype was gas turbine powered. They went for electric traction after the 1973 oil shock, and at that time they also started building all those nuclear power stations that form the backbone of their electrical grid.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 22 Jun 2015 22:35

IR should not ignore maglevs.. advancing and making the technology cheaper could be a big solution. it is also speedier and safer mode of rail travel.

why can't they rope in DRDO labs to do something here?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 23 Jun 2015 09:05

the maglev/EMALs thing was the invention of space scientists and fiction writers long ago. there was talk of a space catapult that could accelerate a payload over kilometers and launch it directly into LEO cheaper than rockets, plus infinitely reusable. I suspect the upfront cost would be similar to the LHC genova!!
a similar thing was mooted for the moon to mine minerals and hurl pallets of it toward the earth where space stations would capture it and make products for onward shipment to the earth or other colonies.

Rupesh · Post by **Rupesh** » 23 Jun 2015 10:16

Mumbai set to get Medha, first local with indigenous power systems

Come August and Mumbai will see the first-ever local train — EMU in railway lingo — whose electrical systems are completely indigenous. So far, all Mumbai locals with the modern Alternating Current 3-phase IGBT transmission technology have been powered either by Siemens or Bombardier.

The new rake, powered by Hyderabad-based firm Medha Servo Drives, will be a major test for the Indian Railways, according to officials, as it looks towards increasing the production of local trains for various metros without depending on imported technology.

While Mumbai's suburban system has had Indian-made power systems, mostly by Bhopal-based BHEL in the good old days when the traction on both Central and Western Railways was 1,500 Volt Direct Current (DC), conversion to 25,000 Alternating Current (AC) meant Mumbai's locals either had Siemens or Bombardier power mechanisms, both multi-national companies.

"When it comes to MNCs, there are problems with patents, transfer of technology and the like. It is always better to have local expertise as, apart from ease of business, it leads to huge savings in foreign exchange. The building of local trains that was well and truly local was long overdue and it is good that the railways is moving in that direction," said another official.

kmkraoind · Post by **kmkraoind** » 23 Jun 2015 10:24

Hi-tech tie up: IIT-Kharagpur, BEML seal deal for designing railway bogies

IT MAY aptly be called a hi-tech tie up. At a time when the Narendra Modi-led NDA Government is gearing up for launching hi-tech super-fast trains in the country, the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, has signed a pact with BEML Ltd to collaborate in areas of bogie design, propulsion system controls and alternative car body material.

I wish HRD ministry/IITM closes up its humanities complex and in that space start collaborative IITM tech venture or expand the current IITM.

SBajwa · Post by **SBajwa** » 23 Jun 2015 22:30

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 24 Jun 2015 03:02

^it is wrong use! washing machine is generally not made with food-safe plastics.
fyi: - http://www.care2.com/greenliving/which- ... -safe.html

but then, Indian aam is generally not worried about hazards or hygiene... what could go wrong attitude or chalta hai yaaar!

people only seek temp benefits and care a hoot on long-term effects. all because of kangrez/UPAvasi inculturation issues.

KJo · Post by **KJo** » 24 Jun 2015 03:25

SaiK wrote:^it is wrong use! washing machine is generally not made with food-safe plastics.
fyi: - http://www.care2.com/greenliving/which- ... -safe.html

but then, Indian aam is generally not worried about hazards or hygiene... what could go wrong attitude or chalta hai yaaar!

people only seek temp benefits and care a hoot on long-term effects. all because of kangrez/UPAvasi inculturation issues.

In India we have a chalta hai, baad ka baad mein dekha jaayega attitude. I see that even in my family members in India.
Even here in BRF. Once I mentioned that we have ruined a beautiful city like BLR with crazy apartment building, swallowing up lakes and the reply some folks said was the population is growing, so what do you expect, we have no other options. There are several options if one wants to think about it. We never think long term. Another fellow says "why are you jealous?"

arshyam · Post by **arshyam** » 24 Jun 2015 04:02

^^ Eh, Railways thread, anyone?

Railways to suffer Rs 130 crore due to fire at RRI cabin in Itarsi - PTI, ET

NEW DELHI: Indian Railways is likely to suffer a loss of about Rs 130 crore with services of more than 180 trains being affected due to recent major fire at Route Relay Interlocking (RRI) cabin at Itarsi station.

The railways have started to inform passengers about the status of affected trains through SMS. Passengers with confirmed tickets of a cancelled train would get a message about cancellation of their train on their mobile phones.

It will take about 35 days to restore the normalcy on the section as the RRI room has been gutted, Railway Board Member (Traffic) Ajay Shukla said here today after returning from Itarsi.

The fire inflicted huge damage to the operation room, indication panel and wiring system.

"Since Itarsi junction is centrally located, trains coming from all directions are being disrupted. Now the operation is managed manually, as a result many trains are running late, affecting the punctuality," Shukla said.

Many trains were cancelled while some have to be diverted. Services of about 141 passenger trains were affected and about 50 freight trains were diverted due to the fire, causing loss to the public transporter.

According to a senior Railway Ministry official, since it will take more than a month to restore normalcy, it is estimated that railways will suffer loss of about Rs 130 crore during this period.

Though investigation was on to ascertain the exact cause of fire, electrical fault was suspected for the incident.

RRI is a system by which all the signals and the points or crossings which are used for changing of routes at junction station are operated centrally from a cabin through electrical devices.

Divisional officers are camping at the site to manage the situation.

Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/art ... aign=cppst

This is serious, given Itarsi's strategic location in IR's network. A lot of trains are going to be delayed while they fix this, and per posts on IRFCA, even this one month estimate is optimistic.

vsunder · Post by **vsunder** » 24 Jun 2015 04:17

These are the Plasser machines for ultrasonic testing of rails on Indian Railways. Here is one such machine near Guwahati.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlJKu2_SLjA

A Plasser promotional video on flash butt welding:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnYjDxmImTw

You can see why AT is quick, you weld, wait for 30mins after the welding by RDSO standards and you are good to go, 55 minute time block is enough for the whole process according to RDSO. Flash butt you have this monster that needs to get off the track and has to be moved out before the train can be allowed to pass. But sometimes trains go over tracks where there is no weld like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd5ZkyVwsWw

By the way there are people on Mil Forum who complain and carp that the BRForum should be only about Mil matters and should not display railway things. Little do these individuals know. They should get off their high horse. For example there is a sequence of posts above wherein various forum members have expressed their thoughts for the edification of others on WELDING. Welding and materials issues have also a strong Mil component. For example I see no reason why the effective welding of rails and related understanding of materials are unconnected to submarine welding. Let me put these clowns behind the 8 ball, is flash butt welding used in submarine welding? What is the relation between time travel tomography, welding defects and submarine detection? What is the relation between cavitation effects in props of submarines and the free boundary of composite materials? All these ideas also appear in railway issues, and answers to these are all known to me, but I would hesitate to make statements about thread-x is low level and thread-x is high level, as Shreeman says just pass on by. The world is very interdisciplinary nowadays, and mil forum is reflecting that, but sadly a large number of individuals on mil forum do not get it and carp. Knowledge of a few acronyms and specs does not cut it in my opinion. If it did all on Mil forum would have long designed a superb LCA by now.

By the way what is happening at Basin Bridge Jn.? Two derailments in 15 days. Fortunately the trains go slow here as they are 1-2 km from Chennai Central. Bangalore-Chennai Mail derailed early morning at 5.45am and Chennai-Coimbatore Shatabdi derailed while the coaches were being shunted onto Chennai central platforms from the coaching yard at Basin Bridge Jn. Speeds are slow here otherwise there would be loss of life.

Lastly in 2013-2014 rail accidents increased 16.6% over the previous year to 145 accidents. Out of these 76 were due to Rail and road vehicular traffic and 25 due to track defects. There have been also bizarre accidents. At Hathras between Aligarh and Kanpur( trivia question: Why is Hathras station important in the life of Swami Vivekananda??) a brake shoe flipped off a passing Howrah-Delhi rajdhani and killed an onlooker on the station platform, this is in the 2013-2014 CRS annual report. Another statistic is that points on British rail are 2% of the track but count for 17% of maintenance costs.

vsunder · Post by **vsunder** » 24 Jun 2015 04:25

arshyam wrote:^^ Eh, Railways thread, anyone?

Railways to suffer Rs 130 crore due to fire at RRI cabin in Itarsi - PTI, ET

NEW DELHI: Indian Railways is likely to suffer a loss of about Rs 130 crore with services of more than 180 trains being affected due to recent major fire at Route Relay Interlocking (RRI) cabin at Itarsi station.

The railways have started to inform passengers about the status of affected trains through SMS. Passengers with confirmed tickets of a cancelled train would get a message about cancellation of their train on their mobile phones.

It will take about 35 days to restore the normalcy on the section as the RRI room has been gutted, Railway Board Member (Traffic) Ajay Shukla said here today after returning from Itarsi.

The fire inflicted huge damage to the operation room, indication panel and wiring system.

"Since Itarsi junction is centrally located, trains coming from all directions are being disrupted. Now the operation is managed manually, as a result many trains are running late, affecting the punctuality," Shukla said.

Many trains were cancelled while some have to be diverted. Services of about 141 passenger trains were affected and about 50 freight trains were diverted due to the fire, causing loss to the public transporter.

According to a senior Railway Ministry official, since it will take more than a month to restore normalcy, it is estimated that railways will suffer loss of about Rs 130 crore during this period.

Though investigation was on to ascertain the exact cause of fire, electrical fault was suspected for the incident.

RRI is a system by which all the signals and the points or crossings which are used for changing of routes at junction station are operated centrally from a cabin through electrical devices.

Divisional officers are camping at the site to manage the situation.

Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/art ... aign=cppst
This is serious, given Itarsi's strategic location in IR's network. A lot of trains are going to be delayed while they fix this, and per posts on IRFCA, even this one month estimate is optimistic.

I do not believe a word that they are going to fix that in a month. Many of these units have cooling units a/c or desert coolers for the electronics. There have been cases of frayed wires on these units and also people removing the units for their personal use. The hot summer might have put a premium on a/c units to cool the electronics and could cause short circuits. But best to wait for the final report. There is a case of a cook forgetting to turn off the electric heater on a pantry car in the Rajdhani and the oil pantilla catching fire and the pantry car was gutted. This happened in 2013-2014. LPG cylinders on pantry cars are all going to be replaced by electric cookers. Itarsi is very central, North-South Trunk line(NDLS-MAS) meets the Jabalpur( where snooker was invented at the Jubbulpore club)-Mumbai line. Bring back the Neale ball and token system!!

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 24 Jun 2015 04:54

^^^
Shouldn't there be redundancy to such systems. Lets call fire an act of god and not get into that can of worms, but failure to build redundant system should cause heads to roll...

vsunder · Post by **vsunder** » 24 Jun 2015 05:02

Before redundancy why not a sprinkler system/fire fighting ability in places which are critical, this is Itarsi not Macdonald's Choultry, an investment of a sprinkler system would have mitigated some of this. By the way whatever happened to MacDonald's choultry between Erode and Salem?
Added later: Oh I see the name of the railway station is changed to Magudanchavadi from Macdonald's Choultry. Probably only Sachin remembers such things. Another trivia, the location of the station at Macdonald's choultry( the south-west corner of the station in fact according to the records of the GTS) is a waypoint in the GTS, the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Tri ... cal_Survey

vsunder · Post by **vsunder** » 24 Jun 2015 07:17

Unfortunately I seem to focus on elementary things, no jargon and things I can compute. If I cannot compute using elementary calculus and no more, then sadly I have understood nothing. Sorry for this OT stuff but let me show how I view things. Take triggers and oscillations in electronic circuits. The simplest model for this is the van der Pol equation. It exhibits limit cycles in it's phase plane. If you are an electronics engineer or design triggers and you do not understand this equation, then you probably did not study electronics. This is a classical topic and you can see the phase plane orbits in the wiki entry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_der_Pol_oscillator

So why am I talking of phase plane, periodic orbits and limit cycles. Because there is the Indian monsoon and there too there are many such periodic orbits that are poorly understood that play a leading role. The most famous of these was discovered by George Walker a British applied mathematician in 1904, the famous Southern Oscillation or it's more modern terminology ENSO, El Nino Southern Oscillation. It is a limit cycle, closed orbit of some differential equation or more likely a system of ordinary differential equations( see what I write about the Lorenz equation below) and you can take your pick what ordinary differential equation it is, because no one knows. The cycle is composed of an air current and an ocean current component and it is stationary, like the transverse waves generated by a string tied to one end of a wall. exp(it) w(x).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ni%C3% ... scillation

But there are other oscillatory effects at work. This year what has been driving the rains is the Julian -Madden cycle. This unlike the Southern oscillations moves like a longitudinal wave so of the type f(x-ct) or f(x+ct), very different from the Southern Oscillations. It is not stationary like the Southern Oscillations. And now you have another sort of periodic orbit of some complicated system of differential equations, that is not tractable. So people make simplified models.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madden%E2 ... scillation

But there is a link between something like the Van der Pol and something like models for the monsoon. In fact the study of periodic orbits of differential equations in climatology goes back to Lorenz and the Lorenz differential equation is usually taught in the last two classes in a good undergraduate class in engineering math. because it has some remarkable properties and the periodic orbits are complicated and have chaotic behavior. When people use jargon/acronyms etc to bamboozle people I know the poster themselves are shallow in their understanding and covering up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_system

Things have become very interdisciplinary, ideas and tools that have been used to study periodic orbits in mathematics with impetus from electronics( in the bad old days the Van der Pol was used for triggers of atim bum), now find sophisticated uses in climatology and monsoon forecasting. So dissing one area off etc. only reveals to me how narrow the focus of the individual. Also an understanding of limit cycles is also useful in biological systems and the first one to investigate this was the Italian mathematician Vito Volterra who wrote a celebrated book in 1930 called Lecons sur la theorie mathematique de la lutte pour la vie, la vie means life. The book has fantastic examples of fishing and overfishing that Volterra solved by studying the phase plane of predator-prey models.
OK back to railways!

arijitkm · Post by **arijitkm** » 24 Jun 2015 10:02

Is it happens only in India ?

arijitkm · Post by **arijitkm** » 24 Jun 2015 10:17

And this.

(Don't know where to post.)

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 24 Jun 2015 10:39

Coefficient of thermal expansion for high carbon steel runs close to 12x10-6 M/k. So one can do the math. Assume a diurnal variation of 20 k, every meter of rail expands 20x12x10-6=2.4x10-4=0.24 mm .

In building a good rule of thumb is that every 50m horizontal requires a 1" expansion jt unless accomodated otherwise in design.

So a 1000 m segment will expand ~ 24 cm. In this case the rail is contained by the pandrol clips and hence the movement is focussed on the small segment that has sprung free causing dramatic sideways movement.

BTW the villagers should be careful as the force of expansion is more than powerful enough to slice of a limb if they are not careful and it will release the energy in unpredictable jerks.
--------------

vsundar saar,

You should post in the weather thread. Fascinating to read of the link between electrical limit cycles and the madden julian oscillation.

Malayappan · Post by **Malayappan** » 24 Jun 2015 18:38

http://swarajyamag.com/economy/railways ... n-india-i/

"If we aspire to shift our man and material shipment on to rail, it is imperative to have structures which foster internalisation of technology purchased."

Some good points there!

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 24 Jun 2015 22:32

you all will not believe this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFuUK9fm4hM

meanwhile japan is nearing to break sound barrier
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/a ... n-test-run

soumik · Post by **soumik** » 25 Jun 2015 20:31

Bombardier has been awarded the contract for new trains by the Aussies, and their Gujarat plant is going to build them.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/sli ... 810644.cms

Wonder why they don't upgrade the intercity trains we have with these beauties, as well.

Also since Bombardier already has a plant here wouldn't it make sense for us to make our high speed rolling stock in the nation aka " Make in India". I mean Bombardier has already executed high speed rail projects in the U.S,China, Sweden, Germany and Spain.
http://www.bombardier.com/en/transporta ... other.html

Also take a look at this monster
http://www.bombardier.com/en/transporta ... efiro.html

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 25 Jun 2015 21:19

Figuring out how to acquire the trainset itself, is about the most straightforward part of the high speed rail issue. The main problems are all elsewhere, i.e. the underlying track and signaling infrastructure development. Yes, Bombardier Zefiros are a popular line of high speed train. The Chinese CRH-1 is Bombardier series based. CRH2 is Shinkansen based. CRH3 is German ICE based, and CRH5 is Pendolino based. CRH380 is what they created by stealing technology and building their own.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 25 Jun 2015 22:43

if a small fire can gut a central node in our railway network, imagine what a troop of F-16 armed with shiny JDAMs could do

vsunder · Post by **vsunder** » 26 Jun 2015 02:18

IR has ordered 72 rakes/trainsets from Bombardier to be deployed on the suburban Mumbai system. Out of these 42 rakes will be deployed by Western railway and the remaining 30 by Central Railway. 3 rakes have been delivered and the inaugural run was on March 15, 2015 when the first Bombardier made trainset was deployed as the Borivali slow local. The design may not appeal as being really aerodynamically sleek, but a substantial part of the body is stainless steel and the seats are more comfortable and also there is an A/C system. Commuter reaction has been positive. Here is a video of the Bombardier EMU in late 2014 when it was undergoing tests on it's brakes and other systems.
The situation is this. You want a Ferrari, fine but you live in Chikpete in Bangalore and so "Ranga ab tu kya karega" with a Ferrari in Chikpete. Getting the Ferrari is no problem no?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjJipEcPT4U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1IeLRCz-Dw

This was the inaugural run:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3KuhlJaiOg

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 26 Jun 2015 03:22

It's a good start. I don't see anything too bad about the design. Sure the front looks a bit dated, but in general it doesn't look a whole lot different from something like the Paris RER trains. With aircon, the next logical step is automatical door closing. They are already being trialed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN6IZy5Ew58

arshyam · Post by **arshyam** » 26 Jun 2015 05:03

vsunder-saar, are you sure about the Bombardier rakes having AC (aircon) units? I couldn't find any references to, just that ICF was manufacturing the AC-fitted rakes.

I am sceptical about the the automatic door closing implemented anytime soon - it will most probably apply to only 1st class for the time being, that too in off-peak hours (that's what the video shows too). If implemented across all the rakes like in a metro system, Mumbai needs a lot more rakes to reduce overcrowding, after all, IR had to invent a new category of rush to describe Mumbai's peak hour demand: Super-dense Crush Load! But even then, they are pressed for operating slots to run extra rakes, as there is just too much rail traffic. WR is already running 15 car rakes, a far cry from the standard 9-car 10 years ago, and running at 3-4 min peak hour frequency each on fast and slow tracks. Same story on the CR side. They need more tracks, but land is a problem (so what's new?).

vsunder · Post by **vsunder** » 26 Jun 2015 05:54

Arshyam: Yes you are absolutely right, no A/C but a forced air circulation system moving 16,000 cubic m/hr of air with roof mounted vents as can be seen in the video. Here is the link:

http://indianexpress.com/article/cities ... t-80-kmph/

Article has something about the doors too. I suppose A/C is meaningless if the doors do not operate automatically. So the current situation is the best outcome. But there is many a slip between the cup and the lip, the next article says the Bombardier design is 0.02 m taller and so there is a hindrance to operating them on CR lines and they want to switch the Siemens rakes from Western railway etc. etc. It is a 4 ring circus that characterizes things and processes in India. Have a read:( somebody goofed, Bombardier, Railways who knows)

https://mrvcmania.wordpress.com/tag/siemens/

chetak · Post by **chetak** » 26 Jun 2015 12:35

Singha wrote:if a small fire can gut a central node in our railway network, imagine what a troop of F-16 armed with shiny JDAMs could do

some bloody babu has not done his homework properly. If this was a vital facility, it should have been properly de risked and either protected in a fool proof manner or simply duplicated at another location far enough not to be affected by the same disaster.

why are these a holes even drawing a salary??

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 26 Jun 2015 20:25

I think the A/C they are referring to is Alternating Current. Hasn't Mumbai been upgrading its D/C lines to A/C at great difficulty recently?

Air Conditioning (AC) and automatic doors have to be the next step.

vsunder · Post by **vsunder** » 27 Jun 2015 02:20

A short 3:15 min movie: A day in the life of a gateman on IR, no words only music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISmDrA2k5T4

Seems like a student production.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 27 Jun 2015 09:43

we should go for ToT with Japanese
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPLx9j-bBHo

prahaar · Post by **prahaar** » 27 Jun 2015 10:43

Theo_Fidel wrote:I think the A/C they are referring to is Alternating Current. Hasn't Mumbai been upgrading its D/C lines to A/C at great difficulty recently?

Air Conditioning (AC) and automatic doors have to be the next step.

Suburban is DC, Mumbai Pune converted to AC. I guess this necessitates WCAM locomotive on Pune Mumbai and Mumbai Vadodara sections.

arshyam · Post by **arshyam** » 27 Jun 2015 19:15

Nope, WCAMs are not needed anymore, the regular mainline locos can take care of things. WCAMs are mixed mode locos (C=DC, A=AC) that were needed in the DC era to run on AC traction as well. With the elimination of DC, their DC functionality is not needed anymore. WCAMs will continue to be used till their service lives end, but they won't bring anything different to the table. In fact, CR will remove the DC equipment in the next overhaul and make them pure AC, if their life left is long enough. No point carrying around unused equipment.

Regarding suburban, AFIAK, the entire Pune/Igatpuri - Mumbai line is now full AC, so DC locos/locals cannot ply. CR is running the dual mode AC/DC rakes ICF supplied over the last couple of years. Only some port lines near JNPT are DC, I think.