The Hindu Business Line : Right on the rails

Yes, Mr Lalu Prasad, the indomitable Railway Minister, who is creating waves for achieving the remarkable growth record last year in freight business, has certainly been lucky for the 1.7-million-strong behemoth. Apart from taking the bold step of legalising the rampant overloading of wagons, and in the process gaining considerable additional revenues, Mr Lalu Prasad was quick to recognise the limitations of the existing network. Thus, he threw his considerable political weight behind the Railway Board's proposal to create separate freight corridors, the only way out to achieve a quantum jump in goods movement given the overcrowded tracks.

The drop in the number of accidents over the last few years, leading to more efficient train operations and wagon productivity, has got the Railway Minister's cup of joy overflowing; he had proudly announced a steep decline in train accidents from 473 in 2001 to just 234 in his Budget speech on February 24.

Drop in derailments

It appears that a series of steps initiated by the Railway Board more than five years ago in the wake of train accidents have at last started to bear fruit. The most remarkable improvement being in the area of derailments, which account for almost 70 per cent of all train accidents. Mostly of freight train wagons, the derailments are all not reported regularly by the media unless the consequences are serious, such as of a passenger train colliding with derailed wagons leading to human casualties.

A move to phase-out the four-wheeler wagons, which were involved in most of the derailments, was begun a couple of decades ago and the ubiquitous KC and C type wagons run no more. However, about 19,000 CRT wagons, which formed only about 3.1 per cent of the entire wagon fleet, were the cause of almost 34 per cent of the derailments, 42.6 per cent of all en route detachments, and 11 per cent of all train partings leading to considerable disruption of traffic and revenue loss. Placed in service only in 1981 they were a long way from their codal life of 35 years.

Phasing out

The Railway Board, in a bold move, decided to phase them out in one go, though it needed some very determined persuasion to get their Finance counterparts to give the nod. Fortunately, the case for their withdrawal from commercial use was strengthened by the Justice Khanna Committee on Railway Safety, which had recommended the drastic step in its first report in August 1999. The entire fleet was phased out by 2001 — 15 years before their due. This had remarkable impact on Railway's safety record.

However, there are still about 20,000 tank wagons, again a four-wheeler design, that are prone to derailments at high speeds. Their days are, however, numbered. With the setting up of Petronet and an extensive network of pipelines by oil PSUs and private sector players, transport by rail of petroleum products may be restricted to some remote areas not covered by pipelines.

Speeding up their phasing out would certainly go a long way in improving the Railway's accident statistics.

Simultaneously, the induction of an ever-increasing number of BOX-N and BOBRN block rakes, especially in the iron ore and coal sector working in close circuit with dedicated maintenance at nominated depots, has led to a quantum jump in the reliability of rolling stock. As many as 1,300 such rakes, though forming only 30 per cent of the total fleet on the Indian Railway system, have come to be accepted down the line — where it matters the most — as key instrument for change leading to higher wagon productivity.

Wagon stability while on the run at high speeds is essentially a matter of wheel-rail interaction. While the two-pronged attack on achieving higher rolling stock reliability — that is, the highly unstable CRT wagons being phased out, and introduction of CC (Close Circuit) rakes — has resulted in a more optimum wheel profile, a crash programme of replacement of over 20,000 km of defective rails also enormously helped reduce derailments. Undoubtedly, a special one-time grant of Rs 17,000 crore for the SRSF (Special Railway Safety Fund) made a few years ago has gone a long way in the scripting this remarkable turnaround story.

Fewer collisions

Accidents at level-crossings, both manned and unmanned, which form about 20 per cent of the total, have also shown a steep drop on account of the large number of road over-bridges built over the years and a heightened awareness among road users for the need to exercise caution at level-crossings. Collisions would perhaps soon be a thing of the past what with almost all stations being track circuited and the trunk routes having axle counters or other forms of block protection.

These inputs, which have been put in place on a war footing over the last decade, prevent any human error, such as allowing a train on an already occupied track or section, and are the first and only effective line of defence in preventing train collisions. Though there is still room for the odd station master trying to pass trains with instruments on the blink, as happened at Gaisal about a decade ago.

The much touted `Suraksha Kavach', an ACD (anti-collision device) of highly dubious value, ordered by former Rail Minister at a whopping Rs 1,500 crore has been on extensive trials on the remote North Frontier Railway. With limited utility in view of the more basic means of safety already having been put in place, it can now be put in the cold storage. For Mr Lalu Prasad would certainly be in no mood to squander any more public money.

(The author is a former Member — Mechanical — of the Railway Board)

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