INDIAN RAILWAYS
भारतीय रेल
All of us have travelled on several trains in India, however, the thought has always risen
"How fast are we going ?", is it not ?
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| Copyright http://www.irfca.org/ |
Being a long time railway enthusiast I gathered a lot of knowledge on an ocean called Indian Railways (IR) and was astounded to see a lot of misconceptions amongst the general railway users. In this current blog I shall discuss about speeds on IR. During my kid days I use to think wow it is xyz kmph... no high-tech devices then...it was just the feel of the wind on the face & the sounds emanating from the wheels.
Until the recent largescale upgradation of the roadways, the Indian train has always been the fastest moving object on Indian soil.
IR trains are divided into 3 types - Passenger, Goods (freight) and Specials. The passenger train movements on IR has always enjoyed the adequate attention & priority from the administration incomparison to goods trains (unlike USA / Australia wherein freight attracts priority due to greed for money).
IR has different standards of passneger trains:
1) Passenger
2) Express
3) Superfast
4) Rajdhani Express (it connects to NewDelhi) / Shatabdi Express (it is intracity day service)
The maximum speed that a train can attain is always governed by the following considerations (in order of descendence)
- speed restrictions placed over certain stretches of track (sharp curve, hill area, bridge strength, dense populace)
- speed capability of the railway track (civil engineering design of the tracks)
- speed capability of the coaches / locomotives (which ever is lower)
Each of the above governing rule is assigned something called MPS - Maximum Permissible Speed (in kmph). The driver of the train should always adhere to the MPS. Another interseting rule is that any train running between Station X and Station Y, should always be driven at MPS. This is done mainly to ensure that trains clear the path quickly so that other trains can follow behind synchronously. This enusres optimum utilization of trakc infratsructure.
So that means, a Passenger train & Rajdhani express will be driven from X to Y at same MPS!!! However, since passenger train has more halts and low priority in signalling, it has to frequently slow down-stop-accelerate, Rajdhani average speed end-to-end will be far higher than that of the Passenger.
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| Copyright http://www.irfca.org/ |
On IR, track speeds of 140kmph are found New Delhi centric. For simplicity sake I will say Ratlam-Delhi, Bhopal-Delhi, Allahabad-Delhi are such 'high-speed' stretches. The reason for delhi centric development is largely political. In rest of India it is typically 110-90kmph.
All the blue coach trains with grill type windows are all limited to 110kmph only. The newer Rajdhani/Shatabdi rolling stock are having capabilities of 160kmph, but then again they are limited by track speed. Goods trains are largely limited to 75kmph / newer ones called ConRaj (container rajdhanis) are allowed 100kmph.
OK, so I have discussed about MPS, but as a passenger what matters to us?... it is actually average speed. End-to-end how much time ? Today, for example Bangalore-Chennai route is having a governing speed of 110kmph, however the average speed of most trains has improved and it is about 55-70kmph. Overall picture on IR is that, due to heavy traffic moving on limitedly available track infrastructure, the avg speed is stuck at low levels. Improvements in MPS and Locomotive pulling power has enabled carriablity of more number of people with marginal improvements in avg speed.
What does the future hold for us ?
IR's arteries are the Golden Quadrilateral and the Golden Diagnoals (Mumbai-New Delhi-Kolkatta-Chennai). The plan is to upgrade the track infrastructure greatly on this network and take it upto to 200kmph capability. A large concentration will be on improving average speeds of selected passenger trains. At these speeds coach windows need to be of sealed type (meaning... need of AC coaches).
300-400kmph track zones are not possible on typical IR setup because of lots of population, level-crossings and 'anytime' criss crossing of tracks by domestic & wild animals. In this type of setup large scale fool-proof fencing is not possible. They have to create dedicated concrete isolated corridors for attaining such speeds, which is hugely expensive, and perhaps this burden cannot be shouldered by Indian public!
So then, atleast for our lives over the next decade, let us all get familarized with the figure of 110 kmph, which is going to largely be the MPS everywhere, and this was also the figure a decade earlier :-)
So this figure 100-110 is the answer to the question "how fast are we going...".
Hope all of you liked this blog, something very different from my core topic of Spirituality !
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