Indian Railways Thread

Supratik · Post by **Supratik** » 25 Jul 2015 19:27

If I am not mistaken the bodies of LHB rakes are desi made. The structure TOT from LHB. That is why they are not upto international stds. This seems to me will be a totally private affair - no TOT or such to railways. They will open production and maintenance units.
Hopefully it will be a different experience.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 25 Jul 2015 19:46

this the BG converted silchar line

NDTV

New Delhi: In a major blow to passengers in the north-east, the top official of the watchdog for Railways safety has declared the Haflong - Silchar link as dangerous for public travel. The Commissioner of Railway Safety who inspected the crucial rail link last month has warned that the "Line cannot be opened for passenger traffic without danger to travelling public".

The observations are part of a report by the rail safety department, a copy of which is exclusively with NDTV. The report also says that despite existing serious issues with safety, the commissioner of rail safety only relented to conduct the inspection last month following "persistent persuasion by Railways"

What is worrying is that barely 4 months after the line was thrown open for goods trains, there have already been 9 derailments and at least 14 instances where the track has subsided. Rs. 5,500 crores have already been spent on the costly upgrade that has taken almost a decade to complete.

Passenger traffic between the two stations was completely halted last year as the final section of this rail link was being upgraded from meter gauge to broad gauge, and the Railways had said that it would be reopened this year. In March, Railway minister Suresh Prabhu had also flagged off goods trains on this route by remote control.

The report has "recommended that the railway administration engage experts in the field of get technology, structural engineering to critically review the present status and recommend suitable preventive measures".

The Railways has an ambitious plan link all the state capitals of the north-eastern states by 2022, but it appears to be a difficult task. The difficult mountainous terrain is also prone to landslides.

Last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had focused on improving connectivity to the North-east region, announcing Rs. 28,000 crore for laying new railway lines.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 25 Jul 2015 19:50

Suprantik,

Whats the point of that. We need technology transfer.
What we should do is take the LHB technology and keep improving it. New model coming out every 2 years. Slow incremental improvement is how the west was won. Take the LHB rake, lighten the weight by replacing heavy components for lighter ones. For instance

Mild Steel Wheel bakes - Carbon disc brakes.
Heavy steel cabin framing - Fiberglass shell/monocoque design. or even Aluminium honeycomb panels.
Open toilet - Contained Toilet
Crumple zones.
Improve manufacturing techniques and machinery.
Good fiberglass mold and manufacturing line can be had for Rs 200 crore or so.

Same should be done for the ROW.
Continuous investment to straighten curves,
properly design bridges,
separate main through lines from station platforms,
raise the quality and weight of rail steel,
Improve the signalling system to in-cab signalling,
Toilets?
Begin the process of access control. We have to at least make an attempt right now if we want speed up.
Don't forget better switches with bridging steel of some kind.

Then we can attempt the process of tilting which is a delicate system or it increases passenger discomfort. For instance the bogie has to be ventrally load balanced.

When we built the metro system we built/re-built the infrastructure first then brought in new rakes.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 25 Jul 2015 19:55

nice but all that would take engineering work, lots of testing, thinking, working with vendors.

isnt is just easier for a piecemeal import ? IR is onlee learning from sections of the armed forces.

schinnas · Post by **schinnas** » 25 Jul 2015 21:24

Indigenisation would be feasible only with privatisation. Making of railway tracks and coaches and engines should be given to private companies. PSUs should be able to bid as equal players with private industry.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 26 Jul 2015 05:49

quality does not come by skinning cats.
you can't make a baby with nine wives in one month.

there are process and engineering issues. we all always have this chaltai (sdre) attitude towards well machined process (tfta). we have to sit back and redefined everything.

Supratik · Post by **Supratik** » 26 Jul 2015 11:35

Theo,

I firmly believe that IR should concentrate on core area of its operation and not try to do everything specially try to be a manufacturer. That should be left to the private sector. Besides the govt needs to demonstrate visible improvements to win elections. It cannot wait for the IR to start learning how to make international std coaches.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 26 Jul 2015 20:05

Suprantik, you just called the entire thing a political stunt which I actually don't believe it is. What I think it is a bunch of babu's trying to push their agenda onto the government. This way they get to take all manner of foreign junkets, maybe a few kick backs here and there, write long pointless reports that gather dust.If 'Make in India' is to have any weight this thing does not pass the smell test.

What the janata want is improvements in their travel experience. If all rakes were LHB, meaning AC, this in itself would be a massive improvement.The LHB was developed after great effort and customization to suit Indian conditions. It is Stainles Steel Light weight and much improvements can be easily added to it. It is designed to go to 200 kmph and with some tweaks can easily get to 250 kmph. Right now India makes 300 LHB coaches pa when the demand is for 10,000 pa to completely replace the existing stock. This is doable and feasible. It is for instance no big deal to add Carbon Disc Brakes to it, because the original in EU had this.

Meantime the technology we do have is being allowed to wither on the vine. The state of manufacturing is so parlous that the wheels are being imported. Global tender.

http://www.dnaindia.com/money/report-gu ... ys-2081898

"There is serious crisis of LHB wheels on zonal railways and production units. Global tender has been finalized and letter of acceptance dated March 17 has been issued to Stork International of Austria and KLW Wheelco of Switzerland for 11685 and 2337 numbers respectively. Stork has offered first lot of 3,000 wheels for inspection in first week of May. However, firm has been requested to supply 1020 wheels by April 20 to ensure early availability of these wheels to lndian Railways," the minutes of a recent meeting of the Railway Board said.

LHB wheels are those used in air-conditioned stainless steel coaches based on designs of Linke-Hofmann-Busch of Germany, now owned by Alstom. Initially imported, these special type of coaches are now being manufactured in India since 2002. The wheels of these coaches are specially manufactured to run at a speed of 160 km/h reaching up to a maximum of 200 km/h carrying coaches bigger in length and width than conventional steel coaches.

Supratik · Post by **Supratik** » 26 Jul 2015 20:42

Every political party will try to impress the electorate except ofcourse the Gandhis who we should be born impressed. I have no problem if political stunts gives Indians European style railways. Having said that it is a clearly well thought out strategy to modernize the IR. If you have been following the thread and elsewhere e.g. the Debroy report expect far reaching changes. This is only a small section of what is being intended. Whether they can deliver is a different question. They can use the LHB rakes to upgrade the non-premium services. And NO just like Air India should not try to build jumbo jets by itself, IR should not try to build coaches or locos or any manufacturing. That is not any railways core business.

Karthik S · Post by **Karthik S** » 27 Jul 2015 03:08

http://www.business-standard.com/articl ... 083_1.html

Spain is likely to undertake a feasibility study for running bullet train on the high-demand Mumbai-Howrah route.
Spain has shown keenness for carrying out a feasibility study of the proposed 1968 km-long Mumbai-Howrah high-speed route, part of the Diamond Quadrilateral project, and a decision to hand over the task to it is likely to be taken shortly, said a senior Railway Ministry official.
.
.

Guess only Italy is left to conduct feasibility study. While I'd love to have bullet trains in IR posters, don't think any distance beyond 1000KM by bullet trains will be feasible both to IR and to the Pax. From the article:

Currently the travel time between Mumbai and Howrah is over 26 hours in Duronto express and it is expected to be reduced to less than half with the operation of the proposed high-speed train.

If ticket prices will be on par with airline ticket prices, why would anyone pay equal amount and travel for 12 hours, when he or she can travel in 3 hours by plane.

Kakkaji · Post by **Kakkaji** » 27 Jul 2015 05:01

Tata rail freight foray

Calcutta, July 26: The Tatas are set to foray into freight operations in the railways as the Narendra Modi-government seeks private capital to spruce up the century-old infrastructure.

TM International Logistics (TMILL), a subsidiary of Tata Steel, has approached Indian Railways under the Special Freight Train Operators (SFTO) scheme to run goods carriages.

The Tata company, a joint venture with NYK Holding of Japan and IQ Martrade, also plans to develop a specialised wagon to carry steel coils and is waiting for the design to be approved.

The Tata offer may come as a shot in the arm for the Suresh Prabhu-led railways, which junked a radical proposal to privatise the sector for a cautious approach

A regular wagon can carry 45 tonnes even as a coil roll typically weighs 30 tonnes, resulting in the under-utilisation of capacity. The wagon can take weights of up to 68 tonnes, enabling it to carry two coils instead of one.

The new wagons will be custom-made for carrying Tata Steel's coils from its Jamshedpur and upcoming Kalinganagar plants.

The company, which reported a 17 per cent profit jump at Rs 42.15 crore last fiscal, hopes to build several rakes once the RDSO approves the wagon design.

Under the SFTO route, the rakes will be hauled by a railway engine and the rail will also provide the guard coupe.

The move will benefit Tata Steel on two counts - first, having its own rakes will ensure timely delivery of the material to the customer. Second, the logistics cost will be down since each wagon will carry twice the load.

Aditya_V · Post by **Aditya_V** » 28 Jul 2015 11:43

Karthik S wrote:http://www.business-standard.com/articl ... 083_1.html

Spain is likely to undertake a feasibility study for running bullet train on the high-demand Mumbai-Howrah route.
Spain has shown keenness for carrying out a feasibility study of the proposed 1968 km-long Mumbai-Howrah high-speed route, part of the Diamond Quadrilateral project, and a decision to hand over the task to it is likely to be taken shortly, said a senior Railway Ministry official.
.
.
Guess only Italy is left to conduct feasibility study. While I'd love to have bullet trains in IR posters, don't think any distance beyond 1000KM by bullet trains will be feasible both to IR and to the Pax. From the article:

Currently the travel time between Mumbai and Howrah is over 26 hours in Duronto express and it is expected to be reduced to less than half with the operation of the proposed high-speed train.
If ticket prices will be on par with airline ticket prices, why would anyone pay equal amount and travel for 12 hours, when he or she can travel in 3 hours by plane.

Cause Airlines will jack prices on long weekends and there will not be enough tickets. In Domestic sector its not only the airline tiicket costs. The cost of Getting to and From Airports, plus eating snaking in Airports. For eg when going to my inlaws place or returning, I need to pay 900 for taxi to the airport and 520 from Chennai airport to my house. Plus a few hundred on food on the way. I suspect the Bullet train stations can be accessed cheaper than these taxis.

Yagnasri · Post by **Yagnasri** » 28 Jul 2015 12:43

The major issue is cultural. We all expect IR to be a free service to all of us. In most of the places the fare of IR is almost 1/3rd or 1/4 of the bus fare. It can not be like that. Being a cheaper more of transport, it has to be less than the bus fare. As per the reports we are charging people 50% of the actual cost. Unless this stops and GOI start running railways like any reasonable commercial organisation, there is use in any other efforts. In fact if we go for private investments with no cultural change then there is a bigger loss of reputation etc.

First thing is to stop cross subsidization of the fares and then proceed with charging fare amount which contain actual cost plus reasonable profit which can be reinvested in the IR. This is the immediate and most unpopular task.

ManuJ · Post by **ManuJ** » 28 Jul 2015 22:53

Karthik S wrote:If ticket prices will be on par with airline ticket prices, why would anyone pay equal amount and travel for 12 hours, when he or she can travel in 3 hours by plane.

Convenience. And cost - consider hotel and taxi as well.

As an example, consider the alternative scenarios for a one-day trip from Delhi to Mumbai to attend an all day event:
Catch an overnight train and after dinner (included in the cost of the train ticket), have a comfortable 8-hour sleep, wake up fresh, have breakfast (again, included...), reach Mumbai in the morning and have a productive day, catch the night train back and arrive in Delhi, ready for another day.
For plane travel, the options are either to travel one night earlier and spend money on lodging and boarding, or to wake up at 3 AM to catch a 6 AM flight, and then again catch a late night flight back and arrive at midnight. Which means you just had a 21-hour day.

If IR can just double their average speed of long-distance trains, which doesn't require HSR and thus doesn't require a big investment, a lot of destinations will become either 2-6 hour day journeys or 8-12 hour overnight journeys - comfortable and convenient.

Sachin · Post by **Sachin** » 29 Jul 2015 09:48

Yagnasri wrote:The major issue is cultural. We all expect IR to be a free service to all of us.

Agree with you. Also we expect IR to give every thing neat and tidy to us, but have no duties to keep IR clean, productive and effective. I don't see the same mentality among the people who use flights. I don't know if the higher prices also brings in better behaviour. Indian Railways are trying many methods to improve itself, but without a large number of the population also being equally cooperative things would not work out.

First thing is to stop cross subsidization of the fares and then proceed with charging fare amount which contain actual cost plus reasonable profit which can be reinvested in the IR.

The Tatkal, Premium Tatkal, "Premium Trains" now modified to "Suvidha Trains", I feel are all measures to get more revenue without incurring additional expenditure. At least in some sectors (Kerala to Bangalore etc.), people are willing to utilise all these extra pricing schemes. Because there is demand. The passengers also cannot complain, because they have no problems in giving the same amount (or even extra) when they utilise the private buses.

Karthik S wrote:If ticket prices will be on par with airline ticket prices, why would anyone pay equal amount and travel for 12 hours, when he or she can travel in 3 hours by plane.

Others like ManuJ has already responded. There are very many major towns and cities in India, which do not have airports. Take for example the town of Kottayam in Kerala. Nearest air port is at Nedumbassery, Cochin (92kms, 2hrs journey time). Now consider a person in Bangalore city wanting to go there over a week end. The airport is far away, keep aside an hour and a half to reach there. Plus around one hour to be spent for on time checking in etc. etc. Then when he lands up in Cochin, he also needs to figure out a way to reach Kottayam (some relative has to pick him up, or he can go by Taxi). Where as if he can plan well in advance (or use options like Tatkal, Premium Tatkal) he can just board 16526 from the city RS at 20:00hrs, have his packed dinner, sleep well and wake up at around 0830hrs the next day, so that he is awake when the train pulls into Kottayam. And there could be hundreds of towns in the similar situation.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 29 Jul 2015 11:03

Logic is there but economics says sleeper cars are loss makers world over. They will have to be eliminated at some point. Atleast for short.medium trips.

Prasad · Post by **Prasad** » 29 Jul 2015 11:12

Take distances 6-8 hrs, get them speeded up to max 4-5 hrs and turn them into chair cars. There are tons of such short range trains.

nawabs · Post by **nawabs** » 05 Aug 2015 02:54

Two trains derail at same spot in MP, 5 bogies fall in river: Reports

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... 352045.cms?

Kamayani Express, on way from Mumbai to Varanasi, derailed near Kudawa railway station, 30kms from Harda in Madhya Pradesh, on Tuesday late night, according to reports.

Another passenger train, Janata Express from Patna to Mumbai also derailed at the same spot, Hoshangabad divisional commissioner said.

Five bogies of passenger train Kamayani Express are feared to have fallen into Machak river, Harda district collector Rajnish Srivastav told ANI. It has been reported that two passengers were electrocuted while trying to come out from Janata Express.

Water level of the river was dangerously high due to heavy rainfall. Kamayani Express derailed while crossing the bridge and its five bogies fell into the river.

Special team with around 25 doctors, police officials and rescue personnel has been dispatched to the spot via a special train. This special train has five bogies. Due to waterlogging, it was not possible for the team to reach the accident spot by road, according to reports.

Rushing emergency medical & other relief personnel to spot. darkness,water creating hurdles but ordered all possible help.

New reports peg the number at 8. kamayani ke 5 coach and janta ke 2 coach plus the engine

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 05 Aug 2015 03:39

sabotage!

nawabs · Post by **nawabs** » 05 Aug 2015 08:09

Seems that water had been released from a nearby dam + heavy rain in the area. There was water on tracks and the bridge was submerged. Tracks caved in.

chetak · Post by **chetak** » 05 Aug 2015 08:17

^^^^^^^

This is not the first time that water being released has caused a disaster. After a number of such episodes, should not the railway and local authorities identify and isolate such spots for special monitoring and jointly coordinate quick action during heavy rains??

Altair · Post by **Altair** » 05 Aug 2015 11:04

chetak wrote:^^^^^^^

This is not the first time that water being released has caused a disaster. After a number of such episodes, should not the railway and local authorities identify and isolate such spots for special monitoring and jointly coordinate quick action during heavy rains??

Is it not the duty of a Gangman/Trackman to check for safety of tracks? If it is not humanely possible can we have technology to fill the gap?we are paying with innocent lives are lost and public property destroyed.
Obviously technology needed is not as complicated as tracking a spacecraft in Mars orbit. If we can accomplish that what is so difficult to check for track status with sensors and send it remotely to a central location?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 05 Aug 2015 14:27

from my experiences in assam floods, the track itself and the concrete sleepers under it may be pretty much normal looking, so any device that passes some current and checks for breaks etc will still work, or any casual visual inspection might still work.

but the soil and socks in the berm below the tracks will be worn and loosened such that the next train passing by will crash

similarly rapid erosion of the mud and rocks at the base of bridge pillars reduce its load carrying capacity...like a building with too shallow foundations.

in severe floods all the soil below the tracks will be gone and the tracks will be hanging in thin air.

Aditya_V · Post by **Aditya_V** » 05 Aug 2015 14:31

Altair wrote:
chetak wrote:^^^^^^^

This is not the first time that water being released has caused a disaster. After a number of such episodes, should not the railway and local authorities identify and isolate such spots for special monitoring and jointly coordinate quick action during heavy rains??
Is it not the duty of a Gangman/Trackman to check for safety of tracks? If it is not humanely possible can we have technology to fill the gap?we are paying with innocent lives are lost and public property destroyed.
Obviously technology needed is not as complicated as tracking a spacecraft in Mars orbit. If we can accomplish that what is so difficult to check for track status with sensors and send it remotely to a central location?

These take money and years to implement. This is where we are paying for Lalu/Mamta tenure of no fare increases, which meant corners had to be cut and lives lost.

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 05 Aug 2015 15:07

Train from Spain: Talgo to run trial runs of faster trains in India

saip · Post by **saip** » 05 Aug 2015 18:12

^^The toilet is great, but wont remain same in India!

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 05 Aug 2015 18:24

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 05 Aug 2015 18:45

Sad to hear more preventable deaths.

Even if the gangman wanted to stop train he has no way of doing so other than heroic light waving at last moment. Despite numerous accidents IR still has not implemented in-cab signalling.

These flood releases are very rapid events, usually a matter of seconds maybe a minute tops to peak flow. Certainly bridges can be very easily designed, tied down, to resist scouring and stay intact during high flow events. It is not very complicated. Cheap and easy to do. Embankments can also be reinforced quite easily. In fact I have see excellent design measures taken on rail bridges on the kaveri and krishna. The krishna bridges held up under a once in 500 year flood a couple of years back that topped out at 2.5 million cusecs, which rivaled the amazon for a few days. a flow that topped the piers in many places. Trains ran just fine.

Probably a poorly constructed old bridge in a fogotten corner. Local folks did not understand the weaknesses of the design. There are thousands such structures on IR usually in places that lack skilled engineers.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 05 Aug 2015 19:41

the 100 yr old bridge in rajamundry must also be a stout old thing given its longevity and the heavy traffic on the route chennai-vijaywada-vizag-howrah.

i believe there is a parallel new bridge now.

i always crapped in me shorts looking at the swirling water below
http://rajahmundry.me/Rajamahendravaram ... davari.jpg

the 1950s burns n jessop brahmaputra bridge in guwahati has survived the annual floods every yr since then.
http://www.travelandflavors.com/admin/u ... utra-2.jpg

bottom deck is rail, top is car.

another scary bridge is the farakka barrage in north bengal across the ganga

nandakumar · Post by **nandakumar** » 05 Aug 2015 20:10

Theo_Fidel wrote:Sad to hear more preventable deaths.

Even if the gangman wanted to stop train he has no way of doing so other than heroic light waving at last moment. Despite numerous accidents IR still has not implemented in-cab signalling.

These flood releases are very rapid events, usually a matter of seconds maybe a minute tops to peak flow. Certainly bridges can be very easily designed, tied down, to resist scouring and stay intact during high flow events. It is not very complicated. Cheap and easy to do. Embankments can also be reinforced quite easily. In fact I have see excellent design measures taken on rail bridges on the kaveri and krishna. The krishna bridges held up under a once in 500 year flood a couple of years back that topped out at 2.5 million cusecs, which rivaled the amazon for a few days. a flow that topped the piers in many places. Trains ran just fine.

Probably a poorly constructed old bridge in a fogotten corner. Local folks did not understand the weaknesses of the design. There are thousands such structures on IR usually in places that lack skilled engineers.

Godavari when in spate is known to have flood flows of 3.5 million cusecs.

vsunder · Post by **vsunder** » 05 Aug 2015 22:36

Talgo or any other company is going to make diddly squat of a difference. While this happens, another Spanish Railway company Grupos COBRA is mired in scandal on the Jubbulpore-Satna section. IR officers having too much gin and tonic in Jubbulpore club and playing snooker.

The problem is as always line capacity. Let us take Delhi-Bhopal. This line carries 255 trains everyday and freight. It is a Class A line. The line is being run at 125% so 25% over capacity. This is a severe burden on speed. The fastest train in India the Bhopal Shatabdi runs on this route. Bhopal Shatabdi has coaches that can run at over 160kmph. The line being a Class A line can allow trains to run at 160Kmph. But the average speed of Bhopal Shatabdi is just half the speed that is it is 87 kmph, not even 120kmph which is what even ICF coaches can safely run at. You cannot run trains faster on current tracks, period, all else is total BS.

http://indiarailinfo.com/train/timetabl ... 518/664/12

Ongoing tripling between Bina and Bhopal may raise the carrying capacity of the line a bit. The route survey for tripling between Agra Cantt(AGC) and Bina has just been handed over to the Railway board for study and possible implementation. An optimistic estimate is that it will take 3-4 years to implement once approved by the Railway Board.

The point is if you wish to travel from Delhi to Bombay, what matters is distance/average speed and NOT distance/instantaneous speeds, which may be high even for the Shatabdi but on the average does not do better than 55 mph.

Regarding the other Spanish company Grupos COBRA, buggers simply put traction poles in with no proper foundation, big scandal. This is the same route where the derailment took place.

http://www.grupocobra.com/

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... 223933.cms

Sorry Singha, you must really look at the Pamban Railway Bridge over the sea to Rameswaram, that is the SCARIEST railway bridge in India. It made Sreedharan famous. The famous 1964 cyclone wiped out Dhanuskodi and this bridge, and Sreedharan got it back into working order in 4 months, that is the time he shot into fame, till then he was a nobody.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK8_fulGVJ8

Lastly while all this derailment in Narth India was going on, one Fernandes, averted a serious mishap of the Madgaon intercity outside Mangalore by waving red flowers and stopping it before it passed over a crack in the rails near his property.

Belcome to India!

http://www.daijiworld.com/news/news_dis ... _id=340984

Arshyam: Yes I totally agree about Balharshah-Jubbulpore. But what to do, all drinking Gin and tonic in Jubbulpore club and playing snooker where snooker was invented. Gondia to Balaghat is gauge converted but Balaghat-Jubbulpore is still Narrow Gauge and the famous Satpura express Train #1 10001 of IR still runs on it. It is ideal for tourism, with Pench and Kanha National forests on either side of the tracks and also an alternative to decongest ET(Itarsi) by sending trains to Varanasi, Patna, and the bad lands of Bihar from Chennai via Balharshah, Gondia. There is a proposal to institute a two year mega block come Jan 2016 and finish the re-gauging from Balaghat to Jubbulpore , who knows. Tamasha like this is going on for years, at least from 2006.

Regarding your other comments, Indore-Mhow regauging has already fallen behind, it was to be operational this month but now who knows. Akola-Khandwa-Mhow regauging is strategic but that is another mess. It will involve a major bridge across the Narmada and also re-aligning the tracks to take into account BG. Come April 2016 there will be Simhasta in Ujjain, when Jupiter enters Leo as it has and at the next Equinox there is a huge once in 12 year festival at Ujjain Mahakaleshwar jyotirlinga temple. The Railways had promised to finish all these re-gauging projects by then as the crush of people and pilgrims is great, like a Kumbh mela and what little connectivity is poor. But it seems this will not happen due to re-gaugng projects lagging behind. In the meantime KFC, Tatkal as opposed to Mahakaal. News reporters do not know what to ask, 99% of articles on IR is food related. Yes "raasta saaf" but the "saaf raasta" may be decades away, (line tripling survey Agra to Bina)

http://naidunia.jagran.com/madhya-prade ... ute-362237

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 06 Aug 2015 07:11

i have been to rameswaram and seen train cross the pamban. in calm seas it would not be so scary as its height is low unlike the godavari type bridges.

in heavy seas the waves would be lapping the wheels I think and thats when trains got to stop.

Kakkaji · Post by **Kakkaji** » 08 Aug 2015 06:14

DFCC to commission its first 56 km stretch in Bihar

The government on Friday announced the first 56-km stretch of the much-awaited Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) project would be commissioned in Bihar in March next year. The announcement comes ahead of the Bihar Assembly polls.

The stretch between Durgawati and Sasaram will be completed and commissioned by the end of the current financial year. The stretch on the Eastern arm of the project would divert largely coal freight from existing rail network.

Sharma said DFCC would gradually eliminate all the 18 level crossings on the 56-km stretch by building road overbridges and road underbridges. The section is being constructed with an average investment of Rs 20 crore per km, Sharma said, highlighting the achievements on the progress of the project.DFCC is currently building 3,000 km of double track freight-specific lines from Ludhiana in Punjab to Dankuni in West Bengal as the Eastern DFC and from Dadri in Uttar Pradesh to Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) in Navi Mumbai as the Western DFC. The project, being built at a cost of Rs 81,459 crore, is aimed at relieving the congested rail network by separating freight traffic from passenger lines.

“Around 85 per cent of land required has been acquired and complete funding tied up. Contracts worth Rs 17,000 crore have been awarded in the past eight months since October 2014 against Rs 13,000 crore of contracts awarded between 2006 and 2014,” said Sharma, adding that apart from the small 56-km-long pilot, the project will be commissioned in phases between 2017 and December 2019.

Sharma also said DFCC would purchase 200 locomotives from Japanese company Hitachi and that order was being finalised at the Railway Board. Around half of these locomotives will be manufactured in India. When commissioned, the eastern and the western arms will divert freight traffic from the Indian Railways and push rail’s share of freight from the existing 36 per cent to 45 per cent by 2019.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 09 Aug 2015 04:24

we should move into advanced bridge layering and redo many bridges.

Kakkaji · Post by **Kakkaji** » 09 Aug 2015 07:55

Railways to form SPVs for infra development

Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu today said his ministry will form special purpose vehicles (SPVs) with 17 states to develop railway infrastructure.

“We are creating a special purpose vehicle with each state separately. There are 17 states, who have shown interest. It would be a joint venture,” Prabhu told PTI on the sidelines of the function to flag off local train at Pernem station in north Goa.

He said Goa, North-Eastern states and Jammu and Kashmir are not included in this scheme.

“For the 17 states, we will create SPVs. The state will invest the capital, along with the Centre, in this company (SPV), which will be used for development of railway infrastructure,” the minister said.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 10 Aug 2015 22:28

vsunder wrote:Talgo or any other company is going to make diddly squat of a difference. While this happens, another Spanish Railway company Grupos COBRA is mired in scandal on the Jubbulpore-Satna section. IR officers having too much gin and tonic in Jubbulpore club and playing snooker.

The problem is as always line capacity. Let us take Delhi-Bhopal. This line carries 255 trains everyday and freight. It is a Class A line. The line is being run at 125% so 25% over capacity. This is a severe burden on speed. The fastest train in India the Bhopal Shatabdi runs on this route. Bhopal Shatabdi has coaches that can run at over 160kmph. The line being a Class A line can allow trains to run at 160Kmph. But the average speed of Bhopal Shatabdi is just half the speed that is it is 87 kmph, not even 120kmph which is what even ICF coaches can safely run at. You cannot run trains faster on current tracks, period, all else is total BS.

Said as much and was given grief for it. We can’t even get the LHB rakes to max out to their 250 kmph speed.

Doing the math it appears 255/1.25=204/24=8.5 Trains per hour. 60/8.5 ~ 7 Minute blocks. Considering the Passenger trains typically run at 4 minute blocks, one can see the dramatic impact of running freight on passenger lines. Essentially halves capacity.

vsunder wrote:Lastly while all this derailment in Narth India was going on, one Fernandes, averted a serious mishap of the Madgaon intercity outside Mangalore by waving red flowers and stopping it before it passed over a crack in the rails near his property.

Belcome to India!

Good god! Can you imagine hitting that break @ 200 kmph.
~~Looks definitely like a Thermite weld failure. That same Thermite welding we were casting a dubious eye on earlier in this thread.~~
Wait a minute looking closer that actually looks like a butt weld, if so this is a butt weld failure. no wonder the railways folks are tight lipped. I'm with you, why can't media ask these questions. So critical to know what failed.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 10 Aug 2015 22:36

do you see a single investigative well written long-form article in any indian newspaper - on any issue ?

we can criticise nyt, telegraph(uk),ft, wapo et al for running psyops on india but they still have journalists who can write such articles.

half of journos are busy copy pasting syndicated articles from abroad
the other half are glued to the phone taking instructions from akbar road what to write.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 10 Aug 2015 23:00

Meanwhile a more realistic article on what ails the Railways. There are some sound recommendations there. Good luck getting folks to listen.
In the meantime another Rs 800 Crore Chex to Air India.
http://www.thestatesman.com/news/opinio ... 80976.html
http://www.financialexpress.com/article ... -2/111693/

Yes. The effort being made for having a Bullet train is one such un-pragmatic idea. The cost estimated by a recent study conducted by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for a Bullet train between Mumbai and Ahmadabad is a whopping Rs.98,000 crore. Instead we can make Indian Railways much faster and more efficient than it is today by doubling the single line routes and adding an additional line to the congested double line routes.

To a great extent he has obliged the government in incorporating its view point. As a result, the final report is substantially different from the interim report. The report is to encourage privatisation in the Railways.

What happened to Railways in Britain after privatisation is a glaring example of its ill-effects. On the instruction of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the British Railway was privatised. Not only did passenger fares and freight rates shoot up unreasonably, but efficiency, for which it was known, had to be compromised. After privatisation, deterioration became apparent in signalling system, quality of coaches and the tracks. On account of this, passengers’ safety became the biggest casualty. Finally, in order to regain efficiency, British Rail had to be made a corporation under the government.

A similar misinformation campaign is going on with the objective to hand over profit-making trains like Rajdhani and Shatabdi on busy routes to private parties. Why are private parties not interested in running ordinary trains on branch lines with lesser profit margins? We want Railways not to part with the expected traffic growth in the next 50 years. Anything additional, it can hand over to private parties.

In the last few years so many committees have been set up to examine the health of the Railways but the recommendations given by them are gathering dust. Why it is so?

Because their recommendations are not implementable. For example, Rakesh Mohan committee had said Railways need Rs.70,000 crore for modernisation. But we asked him how Railways will be able to repay that whopping amount taken as loan. Suresh Prabhu also says money is no problem as we have taken loan from LIC and other commercial banks are also prepared to give us loan. But he does not provide a road map for investment of that money so that it can be returned with interest.
Of course, we need money to strengthen our existing infrastructure but that should come through budgetary support. -(Hello. Anyone listening!!)

The Railways is subsidising Rs.26,000 crore on passenger fares. If the Government of India agrees to return that money that would suffice to improve its infrastructure.

What about the political leadership of the Railways in the last one decade not allowing passenger fare hike?

They have done immense damage to the financial health of the Railways. Today consumers want to pay railways more for improved services but politicians are not prepared to do so for their narrow political ends. We have always supported an independent Rail Tariff Authority which takes care of the interest of both consumers as well as Railways. At the rate of 7 per cent inflation per annum during the last 15 years which saw almost negligible fare hike and the Railways lost an estimated Rs.1.36 lakh crore. This amount could have been ploughed back for building Railways’ infrastructure.

Moreover, IR is spending about Rs.2500 crore each year on unviable non-implementable railway projects announced under political pressure. These projects are only on paper but for that, railways spends money on maintaining offices and paying salaries to employees. These projects are of over one lakh crore and need to be scrapped immediately.

vsunder · Post by **vsunder** » 11 Aug 2015 06:58

Wherever there is a third line or a section is quadrupled and the traffic bottlenecks removed, even decrepit ICF coaches can be speeded up. Here is one such video. This is between Chennai-Arakkonam on the busy Chennai-Bangalore and Chennai-Coimbatore-Kerala section. Watch 37up, West Coast Express( my old train when going home to Mangalore from KGP and Cawnpore) really traveling at 120kmph with a decrepit ICF rake and overtaking a long BOXN freight on the third line hauled by twin Bezwada(BZA) electrics. You can count the traction poles and time taken on the youtube counter and the speed is eye-popping. This run is between Manavur and Tiruvalangadu on the Chennai-Arakkonam section. Average speeds on the section now stand at 80kmph for run of the mill expresses. Chennai-Arakkonam is 69km, fully triple lined and quadrupled except for a 10 mile section.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPKEi92tzSQ

In fact this budget 205cr was released to quadruple this section completely. Only a small stretch remains to be quadrupled. Chennai-Tiruvallur is quadrupled and EMU's run on it. Arakkonam-Tiruvallangadu is quadrupled. So only Tiruvallur-Tiruvallangadu is left to be quadrupled which is about 10 miles. Also large parts of Bina-Bhopal (139km) third line is operational if not entirely.
This will be important to relieve pressure for Chennai-Delhi and Mumbai-Delhi via Itarsi. Here is a video of the third line Bina-Bhopal in operation. One hopes such sights are replicated all over soon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idknaBFqg-U

A lot remains to be done. For example Gudur-Bezwada(Vijayawada)(BZA) line tripling will cost 3300 crores, but only 76 crores was sanctioned in the last budget. This is on the Chennai-Delhi trunk route.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Those of you who have read the biography called the Periapuranam of the 63 Saivite Tamil saints known as the Nayanars, will know that it is in Tiruvalangadu that Karaikkal Ammaiyar saw the Cosmic dance of Shiva in the Tiruvalangadu temple. She is one of only three women saints whose biographies were penned by Sekkizar in the Periapuranam.

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

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

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

vsunder · Post by **vsunder** » 11 Aug 2015 07:14

Some aeons ago I had posted a link to a news item that stated that IR will receive new wagons from Amsted Corporation for trials on the IR network and then this will eventually be part of Make in India with building these BOXN wagons( the articles mention for ores and coal) in India for export and domestic consumption. That article was from Feb 2015. Now in a more recent article in Bloomberg, Veena Mani states that the first tranche of wagons will arrive in 6months. The Bloomberg article also demonstrates how lazy reporters are. The photo of the loco in the article is of a type that IR does not possess and no IR loco has that livery. They have stuck an Indian Railways logo to the loco, shameless people, bluffing! Ms. Mani talks of ALCO's in her article and states that WDM-2B is what IR has in it's diesel fleet. She has apparently never heard of WDM-3A and the newer EMD's WDP-4 etc that are GM locos. In contrast the article in Hindi that I had linked above about Agra-Bina third line, is extremely well-written. It must be that reporters who write in local languages are more vested in doing some legwork, rather than the pompous souls who write for the English media. Nobody knows everything, so why not learn something and spend some time towards excellence. The last para in Veena Mani's article is totally stupid. She writes "The Indian railways hopes to link the four cities, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and the diagonals". Is she smoking something there. Even studying a simple atlas or googling would tell her that all rail connections between the cities she mentions was completed in 1929.

The old link, I had posted in Feb 2015, that light weight wagons would arrive in a year, so things have moved after all:

http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-new ... 12703.aspx

Veena Mani's article:
http://www.btvin.com/article/read/news/ ... up-freight

A promotional video of the Amsted Corporation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5orMIh35jqc

Last and not least, if you want to command 6500 horses, here is the manual to start the latest IR toy, the WAG-9, generating 6500hp and for really heavy freight operations, now I can drive one too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ky0-n8sUiA