An Indecisive Indian

ICF was set up in 1950s as a part of the then Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru’s vision to make India self-reliant in manufacture of current-technology railway coaches. It had since then crossed many milestones and it had gone through many expansions. It had served well to turn out numbers, if not variety, and had the distinction of a world record in terms of cumulative number of coaches manufactured. In addition to manufacturing facilities for all types of railway trains, including self-propelled vehicles, It has a comprehensive Design centre. It had a unique place among the PUs of IR, which depended almost entirely on ICF for new initiatives in the field of railway coaches in preference to the other two more modern rail coach factories, Rail Coach Factory (RCF), Kapurthala and Modern Coach Factory(MCF), Rae Bareli. Integral Coach Factory, Chennai, in 1950s and now But the dream of Nehru for ICF never graduated into even an effectual vision, let alone matching action, to p...

I have for you in this book the story of making of Train 18, the first indigenous semi-high speed train of India, a modern train set. This was the first time that our country got a fully home-grow modern rolling stock, i.e., a railway vehicle for which the concept to design to engineering to manufacture to validation & testing was done entirely in India at the Integral Coach Factory ICF), Chennai. This is not a story of one man alone, it is the story of a dedicated team of Indians telling you that we in India can also do it. I have been a railwayman for life. I come from a railway family. I stayed with my parents in railway colonies in small cities till I was packed off for intermediate education to a boarding college in Lucknow. I grew up among trains and railway stations. Later, after flitting from Institute of Technology, Kanpur to University of Roorkee in the first year of engineering, I joined the Indian Railways’ Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Jamalp...

Cooped up at home, isn’t it the perfect time to resume your writing? Well, I am not quite there yet but then, 19 days still to go (and hopefully no more). Meanwhile putting together my daily pots since 22 nd March.   Disjointed, certainly but so is my mind. Hope to be more meaningful soon. 27 th March We are enduring and we are hopeful. Stay positive, friends! But, a “To be or not to be” moment! What to do with your phone and social media exposure? What to delete and what to block? The Covidiots don’t stop with their dumb insensate bombardment and Covillains keep playing their doomsday prophecies particularly reserved for India. Apart from the quintessential Covidiots who would stay indoors all day and come out in the evening at 17 hr to celebrate in processions, there is another strain from the Whatsapp Open University infected with the Morona virus; they would bombard you with unverified Corona forwards all day without even reading or viewing them (not that their ...