Railways inducts five new state-of-the-art track maintenance machines
The Indian Railway inducted five new machines yesterday as part of the latest state-of-the-art integrated track maintenance technology. These include three highly efficient Dynamic Track Tamping Machines, one Ballast Cleaning Machine, and one Points and Crossings Tamping Machine.
The Railways had earlier inducting 13 09-3X Dynamic Tamping Express machines. These are besides the existing fleet of 883 Track Maintenance Machines over IR already deployed on heavy density routes.
Coaches have been refurbished indigenously at a cost of Rs 18 lakh per coach for taking care of the accommodation needs of the staff of the track machines, providing them a comfortable home away from home.
These machines were inaugurated and flagged off by Minister of Railways & Coal Piyush Goyal, in the presence of MK Gupta, Member Engineering Railway Board, Vishwesh Chaube, General Manager, Northern Railway, AK Khandelwal, Executive Director Track Machines, Railway Board, RN Singh, Divisional Railway Manager, Delhi Division, and other senior officers of the Railway Board and Northern Railway,
On Thursday, at Safdurjang Railway Station, New Delhi, Piyush Goyal also released booklets in English, Hindi, and Punjabi for the Achievements and Initiatives undertaken in the past four years by the Ministry of Railways for the State of Delhi NCR.
09-3X-Dynamic Tamping Express: The New 09-3X- Dynamic Tamping Express costing about Rs 27 crore each and is a latest high output integrated tamping machine having multiple functions, so far being carried out by different machines.
It can measure pre & post track geometry, correct the track to required geometry, can tamp three sleepers simultaneously, stabilise and measure post tamping track parameters under load to ensure quality of work done. This eliminates the need for a separate stabilisation machine which reduces operating costs and track possession time. This machine will vibrate and compact the loose stone ballast after tamping for safe movements of trains.
These machines have been manufactured in India under Make in India initiative with imported components. Around 42 more such machines have been planned to be included in Indian Railway maintenance fleet over next three years. This will further improve the safety, reliability and economy in maintenance of tracks over Indian Railways. This will also eliminate manual measurement of track quality after maintenance.
Ballast Cleaning Machine: Used for screening of Ballast under the sleepers on plain tracks and turnouts for restoring drainage and resilience of track to improve the mobility , safety and passenger comfort. Presently 115 BCM are working on IR and 41 more are planned to be included in the next three year.
Points & Crossing Tamping Machines (UNIMAT-4S): Tamping Machines for track geometry correction on turnouts on IR. Presently 32 such machines are in service over ir and 62 more are planned to be inducted in the next three years.
Conversion of existing caches to Mobile Workshop cum Rest Van: The Track machines are the lifeline of Railway track maintenance system. These keep on moving from place to place for maintenance of track as per requirement. The staff of track machines also keeps on moving along with their allotted machine. The track machines staff is often required to work continuously for upto three weeks in remote areas.
The Indian Railway has planned for complete mechanisation of inspection, monitoring, relaying and maintenance of railway track to switch over to complete mechanised maintenance regime by 2020 on trunk route and 2024 on entire network of the Indian Railway.
(Source: PIB)