Indian Railways Introduced Advanced Technologies for Better Railway Track Maintenance

Indian Railways have five new machines have been inducted which includes three efficient Dynamic Track Temping Machines, one Ballast Cleaning Machine and one Point and Crossings Tamping Machine. These are beside the existing fleet of 883 Track Maintenance Machines over IR already deployed on heavy density routes. Also Coaches have been refurbished indigenously at a cost of Rs. 18 lakh per coach for taking care of the accommodation needs of the staff of the track machines, providing them a comfortable home away from home. Indian Railways had earlier introduced latest state of the art integrated track maintenance technology by way of inducting thirteen 09-3X Dynamic Tamping Express machines.

These machines were inaugurated and flagged off by Sh. Piyush Goyal, Minister of Railways & Coal, in the presence of Sh. M.K. Gupta, Member Engineering Railway Board, Sh. Vishwesh Chaube, General Manager, Northern Railway, Sh. A.K. Khandelwal, Executive Director Track Machines, Railway Board, Sh. R.N. Singh, Divisional Railway Manager, Delhi Division and other senior officers of the Railway Board and Northern Railway, Today i.e. 26.07.2018 at Safdurjang Railway Station, New Delhi. Sh. Piyush Goyal also released Booklets in English, Hindi & Punjabi for the Achievements and Initiatives undertaken in the past four years by the Ministry of Railways for the State of Delhi NCR.

09-3X-Dynamic Tamping Express: The New 09-3X- Dynamic Tamping Express costing about Rs. 27 Cr each is a latest high output integrated tamping machine having multiple functions, so far being carried out by different machines. It can measure pre & post track geometry, correct the track to required geometry, can tamp three sleepers simultaneously, stabilize and measure post tamping track parameters under load to ensure quality of work done. This eliminates the need for a separate stabilisation machine which reduces operating costs and track possession time. This machine will vibrate & compact the loose stone ballast after tamping for safe movements of trains.

These machines have been manufactured in India under MAKE IN INDIA initiative with imported components. 42 more such machines have been planned to be included in Indian Railway maintenance fleet over next three years. This will further improve the safety, reliability and economy in maintenance of tracks over Indian Railways. This will also eliminate manual measurement of track quality after maintenance.

Ballast Cleaning Machine: Used for the

screening of Ballast under the sleepers on plain tracks and turnouts for restoring drainage and resilience of track to improve the mobility, safety and passenger comfort. Presently 115 BCM are working on IR and 41 more are planned to be included in the next three year.

Points & Crossing Tamping Machines (UNIMAT-4S):  Tamping Machines for track geometry correction on turnouts on IR. Presently 32 such machines are in service over ir and 62 more are planned to be inducted in the next three years.

Conversion of existing caches to Mobile Workshop cum Rest Van: The Track machines are the lifeline of Railway track maintenance system. These keep on moving from place to place for maintenance of track as per requirement. The staff of track machines also keeps on moving along with their allotted machine. The track machines staff is often required to work continuously for up to three weeks in remote areas.

Mobile workshop cum rest van fulfills the need of their accommodation cum workshop cum office in such a dynamic condition. Initially, a general class coach was provided for this purpose. With time, it was improved/facilitated gradually and now it has evolved from a simple general coach to a home-like place where staff can have proper resting and workshop facility. The newly re-furbished coaches are provided with fully furnished modular kitchen, RO water plant, refrigerator, bio-toilet, bathroom with geyser, storage space, office cum living space equipped with state of art inverter based air-conditioner, HD television & satellite TV connection, proper beds, LED lighting, wall fans, desert coolers, generator and inverter for power backup and spare part storage & repair space, so as to provide the track machine staff a home away from home. The cost of modification of each coach is around Rs.18 lakh.

Indian Railway has planned for complete mechanization of inspection, monitoring, relaying and maintenance of Railway track to switch over to complete mechanized maintenance regime by 2020 on trunk route and 2024 on an entire network of Indian Railway.

Backgrounder: When a train moves over a set of parallel rails, it generates enormous forces. More the speed more is the pressure exerted on the tracks. The entire track consisting of rails, sleepers, and ballast is a fairly elastic system that deforms and returns to its original position after the train has passed over it. But over time and repeated use, the track progressively moves, causing deviations from the desired vertical and horizontal alignment. For smooth and incident free running of trains, track maintenance has to be done at regular intervals – this includes leveling, lifting, lining and tamping, this ensures the ideal geometry of the track.

Tamping is the process of squeezing and uniformly re-arranging the ballast (rock pebbles) under the sleeper to keep the track in position and provide it with a homogenous ballast bed.  The new 09-3X ‘Dynamic Tamping Express’ is a self-propelled, bidirectional single unit high output tamping and stabilizing machine. The machine has the advantage of an integrated stabilization trailer. This eliminates the need for a separate stabilization machine which reduces operating costs and track possession. The machine is also equipped with the latest measuring and recording equipment. This means the measurement of all necessary track parameters after tamping without an additional measuring run, which further reduces track possession time and costs.