Talgo and India’s quest for a modern train

 

All the romance and legacy of 170-year-old Indian Railways apart, what is very bothersome for any railwayman in India is the question: why do our trains look the same year after year? The same metallic-box look with inelegant windows and doors. The only thing which changed has been the colour from gulf red to blue. Introduction of air-conditioned coaches was indeed a minor mutation but that happened forty years ago and these AC coaches have nearly the same recall. We changed the look somewhat when we brought a new technology from Germany but the novelty and its effect were short-lived; we make these German-technology trains in much larger numbers but they have also taken the same bleak appearance. A look at the passenger trains of Indian Railways is like a millionth déja vu of more of the same.

 

 The perennial question: when will IR have modern trains?

 

This question of IR’s rolling stock always bothered me and readers may find it surprising that a railwayman, who has worked in Mechanical space for most his service life, says this. I continued to look at the issue as an engineer but was none the wiser about IR’s apathy towards improving its trains. I have written in my book, My Train 18 Story, “I had a boyish interest in trains just as so many children have it through ages. I had not travelled abroad in my childhood but pictures of trains from the western world fascinated me and total lack of similar flair and charm, and a sense of speed, in our trains were pretty disconcerting. As I progressed up on the hierarchical ladder of Indian Railways, I realized that despite the ability to change things, the bureaucracy would not let even the most obvious plans crystallize into actions or actions galvanize into something meaningful and not merely an exercise to get blood out of stone. As I graduated from simple maintenance and operations in the field to design and manufacture of rolling stock, things became clearer. Departmental warfare and entrenched lobbies would never let adoption of modern train set concept go through.”

 

Spain is the only developed country which has a rail gauge similar to India, the Iberian gauge of 1668 mm, just 8 mm narrower than our Broad gauge. First adopted by Spain in 1855, the Iberian gauge was sought to ensure interoperability between the gauges hitherto under use as national standards in Spain (1672 mm) and Portugal (1664 mm). Spain, a pioneer in High-Speed Railway (HSR), later adopted the Standard Gauge for HSR. But because of its network of Iberian gauge, Spain was the only country which was in a position to offer modern trains to India without a major effort in redesigning and development. Approach India they did, as the India story was building up after 2014, for trying out their ready-built coaches on our tracks.

 

Talgo, headquartered in Madrid, is one of the leading rolling stock companies in the Spanish railway sector. It started out in May 1941, and now has businesses almost all around the world. The USP of Talgo trains is its articulated axle-less bogies which allow independent rotation of wheels and light-weight shells with all-Aluminium coaches and a design that allows natural tilting of coach superstructure, enabling it to negotiate curves at higher speeds. It makes these trains very energy-efficient. These trains are currently operational, inter alia, in Spain, Portugal, France, Switzerland, Italy, the US, Argentina, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. While legacy of country or manufacturer-specific train types and technology in various countries of Europe make it difficult for a greater penetration of Talgo trains in Europe, they are nevertheless, uniquely modern trains which could be good for IR.

 

Talgo reportedly agreed to customise the trains as per Indian conditions and infrastructure to facilitate the trials and later make all the modifications to the coaches for large-scale introduction. Not surprisingly then, it caught everyone’s imagination and while the nitty-gritty of the proposal, including financing, was not known, perhaps not even discussed, Talgo was afforded the facility to conduct free trials to showcase the operation of its trains on the Delhi-Mumbai route and demonstrate its suitability to fit in with IR’s plan to raise speeds on legacy tracks; a plan which, incidentally, was mostly on paper and in press notes.

 

Immense benefits were projected, like the train’s capability to cut travel time between Delhi and Mumbai to 12 hours from more than 17 hours currently, while bringing down energy usage by around 30 per cent. No issues like how it would be possible without upgrading the track and other infrastructure were gone into and the trials were held. Although it was stated that Talgo was also ready to set up its manufacturing plant in India, anything concrete was neither asked for nor submitted. IR stated that Talgo trains could be operated on existing tracks; while it was known that it would be possible to facilitate the trials without any major tweak to the IR infrastructure, the extent of and expenditure on the infrastructure for serialized operation of trains was an imponderable that was brushed aside.

 

With a newly-elected government keen on high-speed services as part of its effort to reform the railways, all eyes were on Talgo. The news about Talgo trains, that IR welcomed on their tracks, covered banner space in newspapers and TV. Unnecessary hype was built; sample these news report, all fed by IR itself:

 

“…Talgo has offered what has been a dream for the 160-year-old Indian Railways: lighter and safer trains that can touch a speed of more than 160 kilometres per hour (considered semi-high in technical parlance) and that too without having to carry out any major upgrade of its existing tracks…”

(https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/will-the-railways-tilt-the-talgo-way-116022501171_1.html#:~:text=The%20transport%20major%20has%20offered,upgrade%20of%20its%20existing%20tracks   Business Standard, 25^th February, 2016)

 

“…Hold your horses, passenger! We may soon get to enjoy the luxury of Spanish coaches on the Rajdhani and Shatabdi express trains…”

(https://www.indiatoday.in/fyi/story/talgo-trains-all-you-need-to-know-high-speed-spanish-trains-come-to-india-319537-2016-04-23    India today, 23^rd April 2016)

 

and many others.

 

These two are just samples, the news splashed all around was that “Talgo coaches assume greater significance as IR is all set to convert two major rail routes - Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah - into semi high-speed corridors by next year. The 1384-km Delhi-Mumbai corridor and 1450-km Delhi-Howrah corridors are being upgraded at the cost of 18,000 crore to allow the movement of trains at 160 kmph.* Once operational, the railways would require more trains to run at the high speed.”

 

* This was in 2016. More than five years hence, IR has reached nowhere in increasing the speed to 160 km/h, except the one and only stretch which has been in existence for more than a decade.

 

The trials were largely successful and while the media presented very impressive and unrealistic saving in travel time, the fact is that it was possible to cut down travel time by around 10 to 15%. And then IR raised its inevitably indecisive head.

 

The Talgo Trains

The plan, or rather the absence of it, to roll out foreign made high-speed trains on Indian tracks, vanished into thin air as top officials of IR confirmed that the government will not consider the introduction of Talgo trains in the country without going through the tender process. They added that, since no other foreign company had offered to IR the same technology, they were reluctant to go for direct agreement with Talgo. They also started talking of deploying these trains on short-distance routes on a profit-sharing basis.  A committee was formed to look into the matter of procurement or leasing of these trains but as expected, nothing came out of it. All this exercise was nothing short of bureaucratic chop and change.

 

Talgo soon became edgy because procrastination ruled and let alone a yes, even a clear no was not forthcoming from IR. “Despite multiple successful trial runs and Indian Railways appreciating the technology of Talgo trains, we are still waiting for the final green light since October 2016,” said Subrato Nath, Director, India and Asia Pacific, Talgo in an exclusive interaction with Debashis Sarkar of News18.com.

 

The project shows complete bankruptcy of sense of purpose and planning of top management of IR. Just because a reputed global company approached IR for a trial of a viable product and, perhaps due to some nudging by other ministries, IR hastily went ahead with the free trial as if India was some poor underdeveloped country,  waiting for alms. And once the trials were successful and great media hype was created, IR did not have the foggiest idea about the next step. IR did not have the guts to call a spade a spade and negotiate a deal with Talgo one to one, on single tender basis. Instead, IR tinkered with a proposal to float a global tender but once it was known that, because the Talgo product was of a unique design, the specification had to be skewed to suit them, everyone became wary. Needless to add, nothing stirred.

 

I had, meanwhile, taken over as GM/ICF in August 2016. I was quite worked up about the hair-brained plan of testing Talgo trains without any plan for acquisition going forward. It therefore, came as a pleasant surprise when A.K.Mital, the then CRB, advised me for suggesting a plan to acquire Talgo trains, in a manner which would not raise questions of propriety and probity. I quickly made a plan, in consultation with Talgo, which basically included:

 

Authorization by Board to ICF to contract for a modern train (read Talgo) after providing suitable Rolling Stock Programme sanction for energy-efficient Aluminium-bodied train.

ICF would earmark covered space in their Furnishing factory and float a global contract for approx. 1000 articulated-bogies Aluminium-bodied coaches, with the condition that after the initial lot of supplies, a majority of contracted coaches would be built in ICF, starting with and gradually ramping up, hands-on participation of ICF staff.

ICF would make sure that the tender got wide participation from global companies in a fair and transparent manner but, since they had a clear headway, Talgo was more likely to submit the a competent bid and stand a good chance to bag the order.

 

I assured the CRB that once Board gave its go-ahead, the project would be my baby and while all bouquets would be shared, brickbats, if any, would be mine. He, presumably deterred by others in the Board, dilly-dallied and could not reach a decision. A bitter Talgo was thoroughly disappointed and expressed it through muted and mellowed references; they tried to move the government, hit a stone wall and eventually took the coaches back.

 

That was that. Following all this tamasha (no-show), the situation, circa end 2016-17, was one of total gloom as far as the dream of a modern train set arriving on the IR spectrum was concerned. There was no plan and no insight in the Railway Board for making it happen. The botched attempt with Talgo had shown IR in poor light in international railway arena. And in the middle of all this abdication and inaction, something remarkable, something that IR was waiting for decades, appeared. Out of nowhere, in a short period of 18 months, Train 18 happened.

 

And that, friends, is another story. A story, for a change, which saw its logical end. Or so it seemed. If you wish to read about it, visit,

 

https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/8194897432/ref=cx_skuctr_share?smid=A3M8O4N33XL773

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