ATES HELPING RAILWAYS IN MECHANICAL ROLLING STOCK INSPECTION

Train Technology

Background

Indian railways have entered into a TOT agreement for manufacture of LHB coaches from M/S LHB-Alstom Germany. Now these coaches are being manufactured in India under the Transfer of Technology. These are superior coaches with respect to passenger comfort, higher safety, speed potential, lower corrosion and better aesthetics.

With the recent plan of Indian Railways to ramp up LHB coach production and rapid replacement of old design of ICF coaches by LHB design of coaches, there is need to upgrade the maintenance facilities in Coaching Depots and make use of technology available for Coach maintenance. This will also help in improved detection of defects during train examination and possibility of reduction in examination time of coaching rakes to enable maintenance depots to handle higher number of trains examined within the existing infrastructure. This will also ease out those coaching depots not having adequate pit examination capacity to some extent by saving in manpower deployed, pit line examination and maintenance time required for Coaching Rakes.

Maintenance schedules of LHB coaches are governed by guidelines issued by Railway Board, RCF, RDSO and CAMTECH from time to time. The present maintenance regime has evolved based on the performance of LHB coaches from field and periodic review of maintenance schedules and instructions. In the present setup, primary maintenance time of 6 hours is prescribed for coaching rake examination.

With introduction of higher speed of 160 and 180 kmph trains on Indian Railways, there is need to incorporate technological aids in train examination and remove existing limitations and bottlenecks in existing coaching depots.

Historical Background