A Nandy wrote:Track capacity expansion is not translating to timely movement of trains just yet. There are regular reports @RailwaySeva of trains moving 3 hrs late. Operations needs real attention.
And why do you believe capacity expansion has happened? The major sections were operating at 160% capacity, and current improvements mainly patch doubling and patch tripling may lower to 100% say. It takes 10 years to lay 30km of track in India
sometimes, witness the Mumbai Chennai doubling going on for 25 years and still not done. At the end of the current fiscal about 80km of track will still be left for doubling, not even tripling. 80km single line traffic can screw up schedules between major metros. That is why I find all this talk of Train 18 hilarious, where will these trains run at speed? After all Train 18 runs on single line between Allahabad and Varanasi.
On the other main routes, tracks are doubled but at 160% capacity. Line tripling is going on but it is very slow and will take 5-10 years. Patch tripling is not helpful. For example between Chennai and Delhi, only 220km is triple lined while nothing has happened over the rest about 1900km and that is the same situation as in 1980 say doubled tracks. To do 1900km with dum lagake haisa and JCB machine and do earthworks and manually place track now tell me? Even NTC machine does 300km of track laying a year. So if you have one NTC machine how many years will it take and we do not have even that one.
And useless buggers on Internet are still demanding more trains.
Take Jhansi-Kanpur doubling 203 km another project that is now 10 years old and only 35 km done. Company that was doing 70km on it went phut, now a Chinese-Hyderabadi company has taken over and just started to do the 70km stretch where previous company went phut and did nothing no earthworks even. The other two 70km packages, who knows. All trains from North India like Gorakhpur, Kanpur, Lucknow towards Mumbai and Chennai, Trivandrum go on this route, dense single line crossings and a massive derailment at Pokrayan in 2015 when 151 people died due to no downtime and poor maintenance. Line set down in 1883 and the Yamuna bridge at Kalpi gives me hebeejeebies. New bridge coming up but progress is very very slow, they put up a span every 4 months, this will not do. Babaji ka thulla ke zamane se kaam chal raha hai.
For this massive infra push need 20 NTC machines, not the 3 that are working on the DFC. Using JCB and dum lagake haisa is not the way, in the 21st century.
When say all of Delhi-Chennai is tripled and all branch lines feeding into it are doubled, and automatic signalling and so on whole route then time will improve. Even on Delhi-Howrah route, the major yard at Tundla where line branches out to Agra, the entire yard is controlled by manual levers etc, this is a bad joke.
They say when DFC comes on line next year, they will use the downtime at Tundla to replace the entire system by a modern system and panels, so they say.
Here is a point to ponder, no railway zone in India ever meets its construction targets for any fiscal year by even 40%. Take the case of Central Railway arguably an important Railway zone. Out of 300 odd km last fiscal,
they could only complete 48km of track re-gauging, new line , doubling total. Now this fiscal because of the spillover, 668km has to be done that is doubling+re-gauging+new line. Railway Board is setting targets, zones are doing tamasha and people are asking for new trains aur BRF is asking Train 18 Train 18, Train 3\pi^2 etc. Will Central railway do 668km when they fail dismally at smaller targets? Will inept people get sinecures?
I want to use some choice Kanpuriya language here. See all the target tamasha here. Every effing zone is screwed up.
https://www.railpost.in/new-line-doubli ... y-2019-20/
In other news Obulavaripalle(Kadapa district on Chennai-Mumbai line) has been connected to Venkatachalam(Delhi---Chennai line) ----Krishnapatnam port. The longest tunnel in South India at Rapur is on that route. For now only freight will run on this route and shorten time to Krishnapatnam port by 2 hours from places like Hospet, Mumbai. The first freight train that ran on this sector was steel from Jindal steel plant at Toranagallu(between Hospet and Ballari/Bellary) to Krishnapatnam port where it was loaded on to MV Dubgaya. Later this track will also connect with Sri Kalahasti(yes temple place) and Nandikudi new line. For Telugu speakers here you can listen to what the local people say about this commissioning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFth6dmsmj8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z3kx59xdLc
If you don't speak Telugu you can listen to this, the woman is Elisa the sister of Napoleon to whom Paganini dedicated these pieces(she was the Duchess of Lucca)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-yUTlwftCI
If some Telugu speaker summarizes what is being said in the videos for the non-cognoscenti that will be good. It is obvious though what they are saying.