Revolution in Indian Railways

The operating ratio is a major measure of profitability in the railroad industry. This is the Railway’s operating expenses as a percentage of revenue

In the financial year 2020, the operating ratio of Indian Railways was at 98.36 percent. That means to earn one hundred rupees, Indian railways has to spend 98.36 rupees. Which appears to be quite unimpressive, as evident from following year-wise Indian Railways Operating cost data.

During the observed time, the best performance was recorded in the financial year 2015–2016.

If we subdivide the expenditure and income from different sources of railways, it is observed that Rail Freight accounts for the highest share of the total railways revenue across India with approximately 65 percent in financial year 2020. That year, around 1.2 billion metric tons of freight was carried by the Indian Railways. Coal was the major commodity being carried across the country. Excluding coal, Cement, Iron & Steel is also considered as the major share of freight charges.

Whereas the major share of its loss is due to passenger trains and still maximum importance is given on passenger trains. Following graph shows losses on Passenger trains and profit on Freight services.

If we see transportation cost through several means on roadways, Railway is the cheapest one. Still People cannot rely on its services because of a lot of issues. The most important issue is the delay in transportation. This delay in transportation occurs due to several reasons. Initially we did not have separate railway tracks for goods trains. Therefore, on the same track both passenger trains and goods trains used to run and definitely passenger trains are given more importance compared to goods trains. We used to see that goods trains used to wait for several hours to provide passage to passenger trains. Even the speed of those goods trains used to be approximately 30 to 40 km per hour.

To solve this problem Indian Railways needed separate Railway tracks with high speed locomotive engines. Viewing these long term issues Indian railways has taken up a big project on construction of separate track for goods trains. This is known as “Direct Freight Corridor or DFC”. Through this DFC it is possible to transport goods from any part of India to any other part within a day. This DFC route ranges from Noida to West Bengal and from Punjab to Mumbai. The project is almost finished and the route through southern India is pending. To make this planning feasible the Indian Government had an agreement with Alstom, France in 2015. Alstom won a contract worth 4.22 billion dollars from Indian Railways to supply 800 fully electric super-powered double-section locomotives of 12,000 horsepower capable of hauling almost 6000 tones at a speed of 120 km per hour.

With the largest foreign direct investment project in the Indian Railways sector, India has now become the sixth country, joining the league of nations that produce high horsepower locomotives indigenously

These e-locomotives are planned to be deployed for operations on major freight routes across the railway network, including the dedicated freight corridors (DFCs). The first WAG 12B e-loco was inducted for commercial services in May 2020. It was certified by the Ministry of Railways and the Commissioner of Railway Safety, Research Design and Standards Organization (RDSO) earlier this year.

On the contract’s basis, a joint venture was formed between the Ministry of Railways with 26% equity and Alstom with 74% equity, to set up one integrated manufacturing facility at Madhepura, Bihar. It has a production capacity of 120 locomotives per annum. The contract also involved the maintenance of the e-locos for 13 years. On April 10, 2018, Prime Minister flagged off the first-ever e-locomotive of 12,000 horsepower engine, from the Madhepura facility.

The locomotives manufactured at Madhepura are capable of running at a speed up-to a maximum of 120 Km per hour and are built to carry 6000 tones of products in one time. It has already been tested with a speed of 80 km per hour without having any problem. Definitely these engines will upscale the speed of freight transport in the country to two times faster. These e-locomotives are 85% indigenously manufactured. With these e-locomotives, Alstom has also introduced freight trains that emit less heat and traction noise. Having 1676mm of broad gauge, the e-locomotives are designed to take smooth turns even at the sharpest of curves on the track.

The contract also includes the setting up of two ultramodern maintenance depots in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh and at Nagpur, Maharashtra. The depot in Saharanpur is currently operational and the Nagpur one will be functional soon.

Want to know more about MIT College of Railway Engineering and Research Barshi, MH.

Apply now @ https://bit.ly/2K2tT00

#MITCORER #MITCORERBarshi #TransformIndia #MIT #BTech #RailwayEngineering #railways