How can we improve Indian Railways?

[ankur26888]

After the telecom and power sector being benefited from Chinese supplies of instruments, India is contemplating leveraging Chinese experience through a "potential cooperation" in the railway sector. The two countries are slated to share their experience in expansion and management of railway network during the first two-day India- China Strategic Economic Dialogue, starting in Beijing on Monday. In fact, the chairman of the Railway Board will be accompanying the Indian delegation, led by Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia. The Chinese side will be led by Zhang Ping, the chairman of China's National Development and Reform Commission. "Discussions during the 1st Strategic Economic Dialogue will focus on plan formulation and implementation in India and China, the global economic outlook, efficient use of water resources, energy efficiency and pricing and potential cooperation in the railway sector," said a communique issued by the Ministry of External Affairs. Both sides had agreed to establish the dialogue platform during Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to India late last year. Although both are among the top five largest railway networks in the world, India has been sluggish in expanding its network while China has made a determined progress and has set an ambitious expansion plan of high-speed rail network to connect the remotest parts of the country to its fastest growing regions by 2020. The Indian side is likely to use the dialogue forum to explore cooperation in this sector, particularly drawing lessons how to use cheap technologies to undertake massive expansion of the railway network.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/India-eyes-cheap-China-tech-for-railway-expansion/851650/

 

[cir]

Please don't.

Chinese railway equipments are unsound and of low quality.

Indian life is more important than saving billions of dollars and precious time.

India should ask the Japanese or the Germans for the modernization fo its rail networks, especially high-speed railways.

 

[pmaitra]

Please don't.

Chinese railway equipments are unsound and of low quality.

Probably not those that PRC uses inside the country, but definitely those locomotives given to Pakistan are unreliable and inefficient. They are not earning PRC a whole lot of reputation.

Indian life is more important than saving billions of dollars and precious time.

India should ask the Japanese or the Germans for the modernization fo its rail networks, especially high-speed railways.

Definitely, the Germans, French, Spanish and the Japanese make the best trains no doubt about that.

 

[Ray]

India must tread carefully.

Made in China has not proved well for China itself, as far as railways go.

Better to pay more elsewhere and better to be safe than sorry as cir has so wisely suggested!

 

[pmaitra]

How can we improve Indian Railways?

Kindly post any new developments around the world that could be incorporated into Indian Railways.

Suggest how should Indian Railways go forward, pertaining to technology, routes, fare system, cleanliness etc..

Also, post your ideas about high-speed railways in India, its potential and feasibility!

 

[pmaitra]

I am starting off from a different thread where the discussion was rather specific.

No, having iron doesn't mean having iron rai which suits the new speed standard. You have to replace at least a part of your rail as they cannot sustain the high speed.

For example, China replaced most of its rail to cop with high speed. The new rail has a weight of 60-70kg/m and 100m length while the old one is 50kg/m and 25m.

<1> We already have heavy rails for freight intensive routes. We are also contemplating heavier rails and higher catenary for double decker container trains.

Stone India Limited has already made a larger pantograph for our locomotives. They are called Omniversal Intelipanto.

<2> Other than that, the kind of metal alloys we use still has some expansion and contraction. We need to come up with alloys that will have minimal expansion and contraction due to heat and be strong enough and not susceptible to deformation. We also cannot run freight trains on these dedicated high speed routes as freight trains damage tracks.

<3> Also, for high speed trains, we might need to incorporate tilting trains. That will require more spacing between two parallel tracks. The current standards are:

Source: [IRFCA] Permanent Way - Dimensional Diagrams

Again, no. Your signal system is only working for low speed. With increasing speed, there is a lot of new potential safty problems would appear, so you have to install a lot of new sensors. Meanwhile, high speed means shorter response period and long braking distance, so you have to renew your signal system.

You have good knowledge in this subject. Yes, you are right. We will need to install newer signalling system. I believe we can upgrade the existing ones with the stuff you mentioned.

<4> On tracks turnouts/switches/points:

Also, we used to have multi-piece frogs earlier:

Nowadays, we have monolithic frogs in high speed routes.

These images are for example only.

We need to get frogs with a switching flange to enable further high speed negotiation:

No, you still to provid a proper trainning to upgrade their knowledge and skill as their exsting knowledge doesn't work well in new scenario.

Yes, of course, we need to provide training. What I am saying is that we do not have shortage of skilled and unskilled manpower.

 

[pmaitra]

Break of Gauge: Spanish Talgo

 

[pmaitra]

Break of Gauge: Russian Railways

Trans-Siberian Railroad: Bogie Changing

 

[pmaitra]

Crossposting:

Indian locomotives are very much capable of close to 250 kmph speed. It's just that our tracks and our rolling stock are not capable enough.

On the other hand, there are few ques one could take from the tries and tested technology of the TGV trains. The main focus should be on the bogies and how they are shared between consecutive carriages:

P.S.: This is not from the latest TGV, but gives interesting inputs.

Read more: TGVweb - "Under the Hood" of a TGV

 

[Ray]

Slow train coming

If the Indian economy is to generate growth and jobs at a rate commensurate with its rapidly growing workforce, modernising transport networks is crucial. But a major infrastructure sector that has effectively eluded reform is Indian Railways. The main drawback has been rail budgets, which continue to adopt a populist stance. Another rail budget is due to be presented next month. Can railway minister Dinesh Trivedi pull the chain in time, before Indian Railways effectively goes off the tracks?

Rail ministers of all hues have gratuitously ignored even the need for recouping cost of running passenger services and have instead raised freight prices, especially on goods where railways have a near monopoly. The last eight budgets have seen only token increases in passenger fares. This has almost trebled the losses incurred on passenger services to around Rs 20,000 crore. Such policy distortions have slowed down growth of revenues and also investments that are desperately needed for modernising the network and increasing productivity. Mail and express trains in India now run below 55 kmph, low by all international benchmarks. Network productivity of Indian Railways is just about half that of the Chinese rail network, which has made huge investments in technology to improve asset utilisation.

Pulling Indian Railways out of the rut requires a reversal of pricing policies and other bold and innovative moves. A first step would be setting up the Rail Tariff Regulatory Authority and ending cross subsidisation of rail services to strengthen railway finances. Extension of the dynamic fare strategy, now implemented in the freight business, to passenger services would also help mobilise more earnings. The large stock of unused railway land can also be monetised by floating PPP projects and by auctions.

Improved finances would allow for introducing new technologies and larger capacity additions, including in more coaches and higher capacity engines, and also for new high-speed rail corridor projects. Another important step is to ensure that the Railways focus exclusively on running of trains and spin off other activities like equipment manufacture, running hospitals, catering units and other such services. Let's not confuse issues. Railways has commercial objectives and should not be seen as a giant social welfare organisation. The latter approach will simply run the Railways - once the pride of India - into the ground. The UPA government is seen as struck by policy paralysis. But it can dispel that impression by passing a radical railway budget that can rescue Indian Railways from becoming an antique relic.

Slow train coming - The Times of India

 

[Ray]

The Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi has himself said that politics has to go out of Railway management and it should be professionally addressed.

But will he be allowed to make it a professional organisation?

 

[pmaitra]

The Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi has himself said that politics has to go out of Railway management and it should be professionally addressed.

But will he be allowed to make it a professional organisation?

Since he is a politician, he needs to quit first and make this into a public-private corporation.

In any event, I think the government will have to raise fares and focus the increased revenue on safety. That is where I stand.

 

[pmaitra]

High Speed Railway Network in PRC

High Speed Railway Network in PRC - no little achievement this. Note, only high speed routes are shown. There are other routes as well.

 

[Illusive]

Please don't.

Chinese railway equipments are unsound and of low quality.

Indian life is more important than saving billions of dollars and precious time.

India should ask the Japanese or the Germans for the modernization fo its rail networks, especially high-speed railways.

I second that, Japanese would be better for HSR.

 

[sob]

From the above article

India has been sluggish in expanding its network while China has made a determined progress and has set an ambitious expansion plan of high-speed rail network to connect the remotest parts of the country to its fastest growing regions by 2020. The Indian side is likely to use the dialogue forum to explore cooperation in this sector, particularly drawing lessons how to use cheap technologies to undertake massive expansion of the railway network.

This use of cheap technology is a big red flag. To me it seems that underhand deals have been struck already.
The only reason why IR has not expanded has been that successive Railway Ministers have only announced new trains and money has never been spent on expansion of Track. Announcing new trains gives an immediate political boost while, building rail tracks is a long term process. For our politicians whose focus is from one election to another election, new tracks just do not come in their priority.

 

[pmaitra]

From the above article


This use of cheap technology is a big red flag. To me it seems that underhand deals have been struck already.
The only reason why IR has not expanded has been that successive Railway Ministers have only announced new trains and money has never been spent on expansion of Track. Announcing new trains gives an immediate political boost while, building rail tracks is a long term process. For our politicians whose focus is from one election to another election, new tracks just do not come in their priority.

That is why ministers lay foundation stones, so that by the time the project completes, even if he is not the minister, people will remember him.

 

[Armand2REP]

Who can trust China for HSR technologies? Their railways are a disaster area that they try to bury the evidence... literally.

 

[pmaitra]

Who can trust China for HSR technologies? Their railways are a disaster area that they try to bury the evidence... literally.

We have far more deaths in Indian train accidents, and our trains aren't exactly HSR.

Let's give credit to PRC where ti is due.

 

[Bangalorean]

You cannot improve "Indian railways", the current organization. There is no way it can be done in the current format of the organization.

Get more private participation in the railway system. Have a small and powerful governmental "core" to run IR - let this "core" perform just overall administrative tasks, and handing out sub-tasks to competent private authorities. Each peripheral task of the railways should be handled by private parties - only the coordination needs to be performed by the governmental "core". In short, outsourcing is the answer.

The way Indian railways currently is, it cannot do any good.

 

[Bangalorean]

And yes - this crappy tradition of having a separate "railway budget", relic of British times, needs to be done away with.