NEW DELHI: Indian Railways should be in a position to serve better once the nation-wide lockdown is lifted and train services resume.
Using the lockdown as an opportunity, the backend workforce of the Indian Railways have executed a number of long-pending and major maintenance works of bridges and tracks to improve the safety and operational efficiencies of the train services.
Remodeling of yards and renewal of scissors crossover are among other major works that the Indian railways backend “warriors” have executed during this period.
“Pending for several years, they often confronted Indian Railways as bottlenecks in different zones across the country,” Union Ministry for Railways said in a statement on Saturday.
As many as 500 modern heavy duty track maintenance machines along with track, signal and overhead equipment (OHE) maintainers were deployed to work regularly for 10,749 machine days to complete the “overdue” track maintenance work of 12270 kilometer plain track and 5,263 numbers of turn outs, it added.
Health of the track was monitored through periodic runs of oscillation monitoring system (OMS) cumulating 1,92,488 kilometer of track at 5,362 peak locations indicated by the OMS test.
“This has been attended to ensure proper quality,” the ministry said.
India has witnessed a total of 291 consequential train accidents at various locations in the country upto march 2020 since 2016, according to official statistics.
At least 335 persons died in these accidents while 761 were injured.
“Ultrasonic flaw detection (USFD) of 30182 kilometr of track and 1,34,443 rail welds has been carried out with USFD machine.” The Railways Ministry said.
Critical summer precaution activities like de-stressing of long welded rail (LWR), which involved huge men power, has been taken up with a new procedure for carrying out the work.
“A total of 2,246 kilometer of de-stressing of LWR has been done,” the ministry said.
Indian Railway runs more than 20,000 passenger trains daily on both long-distance and suburban routes from 7,321 stations located across the country.
“The Ministry planned for execution of long pending works during lockdown period considering it once in a lifetime opportunity to wipe out maintenance arrears,” an official said.
