Device will help Railways to improve `track' record

Device will help Railways to improve `track' record
Raju Korti

MUMBAI, Feb 21: The Indian Railways which has not had an exactly enviable track record in the recent times as far as safety is concerned -- what with a spate of ghastly mishaps -- should draw comfort from this. In a major breakthrough in the detection of rail/weld failures, five senior engineers have successfully designed and developed a low cost, lightweight and easy-to-use rail fracture/weld fracture detecting machine.

The device, the brainwork of Chief Engineer A K Mehrotra, Sr Divisional Engineer (Coordination) S K Pathak, Divisional Engineer O P Tiwari, Assistant Engineer H S Chaturvedi and Sr Section Engineer Anand of the Nagpur division of the Central Railway, will come as a great relief to harried Railway officials who have been at their wit's ends in tackling the menace that has assumed serious proportions in the recent years. While the problem was in evidence in other zones of the Railways, it was particularly serious in the Northern Railways and The Indian Express had run a series on the same last year.

Alarmed by the accidents that have claimed hundreds of lives, the Railways had started developing new technologies to eliminate the `human factor' involved in the procedures and methods of working. The detector has thus come as a welcome relief.

Although regular ultrasonic testing of rails is being done over a certain specific schedule, there have been a number of cases where the rail/weld have failed much before their designed time of renewal. This desperate situation brooked desperate measure from the Railways which has been deploying patrolmen to man and detect these failures all through the year during the extreme temperature periods of the day. With its vast and intricate network, the magnitude of such manual monitoring can only be imagined.

Presently, the patrolman does this job purely by visual inspection. Which means that there are always chances of a human error. The job becomes tricky, almost impossible during the night time.

The Engineers point out that it is a nightmare to imagine the consequences of undetected rail/weld fractures in the tracks, particularly during the night. According to them, the present system of a patrolman using a torch to inspect the rail welds has become ineffective and obsolete given the tremendous strain the system faces today. `It is sheer luck if a patrolman can detect all such fractures before the sunrise. The machines employed on the job are cost-prohibitive and call for expert's handling. Our device is sturdy, requires low maintenance and can be easily operated during the night', the added.

Explaining the technicalities involved, Anand said rail/weld fractures occur when the combined effect of traffic and temperature stresses get too much for the rail to endure.

The detector costs just Rs 3500 and its weight of 14 kg makes it easy to operate. It works on the simple principle of two Probes where Probe One transmits electric signals onto the rail and is picked up by Probe Two. In case of a weld/rail fracture, the signal from Probe One cannot read Probe Two and the circuit inside the machine activates a buzzer to alert the patrolman. The machine is also provided with a light which can be turned on to examine the fracture. Additionally, a red flasher is also provided in case of an emergency to alert the driver of the coming train. All these operations can be performed by even illiterate staff.

The detector has already won the approval of technical experts from the Railways after a demonstration in Lucknow last month. Said Anand, `the device can bring down drastically the number of mishaps and the Railways can improve on their safety record'