Train 18 ..The concept

As I sit back and relax to mitigate ennui arising out lack of business in these superannuated days, and even as introduction of Train 18 in commercial service is under some cloud, I have no worries. The PM himself has spoken about it many times. Unless there is some basic issue, which I dare say does not exist, they may delay its introduction but run it will, soon. Der aaye, durust aaye will be the outcome; better late than never.

But many friends here in Lucknow and Chennai urged me to document the project from concept to fruition. Documentation is boring!. So let me put together a chronicle. It is not going to be easy to recount the Train 18 journey. So many have contributed so much and there is always the risk that some part would get omitted or downplayed unintentionally. Nevertheless, let me try.

In all the countries of the world with advanced or large railways systems, e.g., Europe, particularly western Europe and Japan and now for some 15 years, China, Korea and many middle income countries, the trend has been to deploy train sets for medium and high speed services for the last three decades or so, either with two power units at the end or with distributed power all over the train. The advantages are, no detention at terminals, faster acceleration, lower travel time, energy efficiency, operating flexibility and so on. Suffice it to say, this is not something which calls for unnecessary debate. It’s a matter of fact that train sets are the norm of the day.

In India, we have a large network of passenger carrying trains, the largest in the world, and it obviously calls for great stress on train punctuality. In this background, any rolling stock which cut down travel time would clearly fulfil a pre-eminent need; train sets offered just the right solution. We had, however, been debating the issue for nearly twenty five years but as usual, it had been just debate, with hardly any positive action, partly due to departmental turf war which, unfortunately, is so prevalent even today. I dare say that I was equally guilty, like so many of my colleagues and seniors in the decision-making tree, not to have been entirely honest while analysing the issue. But, I had internalized the crying need for train sets, and also made it clear to whoever listened that train sets would arrive in India, sooner or later, and that we should shed the dilly dallying business and petty prevarication to work towards getting them through some amicable resolution of the internecine conflict. Alas, it did not happen, except that we kept talking about it.

I joined as the General Manager of Integral Coach Factory (ICF; by the way I had  requested to be given this assignment, unlike nearly all other would be GMs, who would have liked to head a zonal railway as it afforded an empire, albeit still quasi-feudal in working or perhaps because of this fiefdom) in August 2016. To my pleasant surprise, I found that ICF team had the capability and the enthusiasm to do something new. I would go a bit farther to say that I detected in them a certain chutzpah, an audacity to think out of the box. I decided that we must build a modern train set at ICF as it would be now or never, at least for me. The ICF team seemed pretty excited about the possibility. The imponderables presented to me were:

·  How do we do it without a sanction from Board?

·  Even if the sanction was received, this type of a project for de novo design and

    manufacture of a rolling stock would take three to four years, what with leadership

    changes, would this be taken to fruition?

·  There are gaps between what we want to do and what we are capable of!

I addressed the three issues parallel. In spite of some opposition from some key players in the Board, I was able to convince the then CRB to give us the go ahead, which we received in the first week of April 17. As for the other two issues, I quoted Lucio in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure who says, “Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt" or as Allama Iqbal said, “Girte hain shahsawar hi maidaan-e-jung mein, wo tifl kya gire jo ghutno ke bal chale”. You have to make an attempt or you would never exploit your full potential. I told the key team members that the days of their doubts were over. Shakespeare once again, as I know that the team had exactly what it took, as Iago tells Roderigo, “If thou hast that in thee indeed, which I have greater reason to believe now than ever, I mean purpose, courage, and valour, this night show it.”  We were going to harness the technical prowess, experimental skill and the sense of purpose of the team to design and manufacture the best train ever made in India, matching world standards. And to make sure that the project did not hit any roadblock with change of leadership, we were going to do it well before I retire, that is, before Dec 2018. The prototype train must be out of ICF in 2018 itself and so we called it Train 18

We sat down for multiple meetings circa March/April 17 Feb/March and finalized the concept. Nearly all the countries, except France, have moved to a concept of distributed power train sets with under-slung electrics, no power units at all but only a driver's cab at each end. The advantage in such a system was obvious: more space for passengers. Our design would be suited to our conditions and realities; a train capable of 160 km/h operation without any fancy red herrings like 200 km/h speed, tilting, super aero-nose etc. (I have worked in railways for too long to realize that the best is always the enemy of the good and while the best remained a pathetic pipedream, even the good is mostly squandered away). It was also agreed by all key members that we would do it all on our own without the crutches of any ToT. We made a matrix of main features of all train sets and broke it down in three categories: 1) where we were almost there 2) where we could be there with some handholding by superior intelligence and 3) where we could be there with judicious selection of vendors, including import, but strictly as per our specs and drawings.

Why do I label ToT as crutches? Simple. I have been involved in many projects of rolling stock, e.g., EMD locos, ABB locos, LHB coaches, Gottwald cranes and so on. All foreign suppliers who win a supply+ToT contract from Indian Railways (IR) approach the technical interactions with a certain arrogance. I don’t blame them. If we do not exude confidence ourselves, why would a firangi? It was high time that the engineers of IR came of age and did things themselves. And generate their own IPR which would be then protected fiercely with pride.

Early in April 17, everyone in ICF knew that we meant business and something unique was going to happen. So there we were, about to start an exciting journey to build a modern train set from scratch; the first time a project of this magnitude was ever attempted on IR.

And so from hour to hour we ripened and ripened...and thereby hangs a tale. (to be continued)