Trains are not Rockets (and so, not a rocket science)

 

One would expect that a firm plan for the Indian Railways’ (IR’s) rolling stock (coaches, wagons and locomotives) to be manufactured and procured over the next decade, and a lucid picture of how our trains should look like, say in 2035, is an important aspect of IR’s overall planning. It is certainly not something so complicated or orphic that a member of the Railway Board, the Member (TRS), has to be sacked to make a meaningful headway on the subject. Strange though it may sound, that is what happened recently in a meeting taken by the Minister of Railways on the subject; apparently the gentleman in question came totally unprepared and was shown the door. I do not know the gory details but it certainly weighed me down, and amused me, both at once.

So, here I am, trying to unravel something which has unnecessarily become ‘rocket science’? The exercise would usually need going thought the mammoth data of passenger preferences and patronization, which is easily available from IRCTC data bank. Study the legacy and the changing scenario of committed rail passengers. Sift through the emerging trends of air and road travellers and the trajectory of loss of IR’s passengers to these sectors. Look at your success stories. Think aspirational India and make for yourself a picture of the trains that would criss-cross the country in ten to twenty-five years from now, because the codal life of railway rolling stock is more than thirty years and it is not as if you can quickly get rid of what you make today. And importantly, turn a deaf year to the tribe of hotshot prophets of doom who do not see much future for IR. 

I do not have ready access to all this data but I do have some ideas. These ideas need to be refined with more informed wisdom. I will, however, attempt to put together these ideas in this blog in a short series, ideas that would be open to correction with inputs welcome from all the readers.

 

The first requirement is that IR must wriggle out of this syndrome of broadcasting half-baked ideas and letting hype rule whereas the actual follow-up on ground by the phalanx of railway executives is nothing less than boiling the ocean.

 

I also do not place much faith in the draft National Railway Plan which, to my mind, is nothing but an arm chair projection of everything, including that for rolling stock, on the basis of application of simple unitary method and extrapolation of CAGR numbers. The number of coaches to be manufactured and phased out should, largely, depend upon how the clientele shapes up; in any case the production programmes for the IR Production Units varies significantly from year to year and as one can see today, and in spite of course corrections, there may not be a requirement to add capacity beyond the 8500 per year or so, which is established.

 

The plan for IR’s rolling stock should not be confused with the shape High Speed and Metro trains would take in India as they are neither within the purview of IR not does this segment overlap much with IR’s trains. At the same time, the proposed inter-city train set-based Rapid Rail Transit Systems (RRTS) should not vitiate the efforts of IR; even if they are kept as independent entities, they must be aligned with IR to in terms of their fare structure and level of comfort.

 

All new trains to be manufactured should be air-conditioned (AC) type except Luggage and Power cars. I have already written about it in Hindu BusinessLine (link given below) with dreams of an aspirational India in mind and so I am not going into the details, except mentioning that all Indians, the poorest travellers included, should be able to afford air-conditioned comfort some time in the 2030s. All non-AC coaches should be phased out by 2045. Another piece written loosely on the same subject is likely to be published soon but this article has gone more into specifics.

 

https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/shift-to-ac-only-trains-a-cool-option/article37688838.ece

 

A large number of Train sets, Train 18 and its clones, should be introduced for the highest end of Shatabdi and Rajdhani travellers with such values as curtailed travel time and better comfort and the fare should be higher as in Vande Bharat expresses. For introduction in Rajdhanis, Integral Coach Factory (ICF) should immediately develop and introduce a Sleeper version of Train 18, with breakneck speed, as Train 22 and that is something ICF is surely capable of. A clear-cut plan to upgrade the train set design to Aluminium body and tilting mechanism should be in place with a view to introduce such trains, to be manufactured by ICF, by 2025, perhaps christened Train 24 or Train 25. This will help save energy and also enable IR to run trains in the speed range of 160 to 200 km/h.

 

The fare of AC I and AC II should be increased gradually and if this means loss of clientele, so be it. There is no need to subsidize these travellers and depending upon the patronage, the number of such coaches to be manufactured should be cut down, or even brought to nil. What it boils down to is that apart from high end train sets, IR should mainly manufacture AC Economy coaches to sleep around 100 and AC Chair Cars to seat around 120.

 

All short-distance and suburban travel trains, MEMUs (Main-line Electrical Multiple Units) and EMUs should also be air-conditioned, with their fare structure made commensurate with Metro fares. This, an inherently politically unpopular proposal but if implemented gradually, it is something that the government can afford without a great populist reaction.

 

This would still leave out a segment of very poor long-distance travellers, like the migrant workers, who may not be able to afford even the subsidized fares of AC Economy coaches. They cannot be left in the lurch. Every route can have at least one non-AC long-distance train with a newly-designed coach which can seat around 120 and in addition, sleep around 40. This may seem to be bizarre but believe me, such a design with minimal seating space per seat and rudimentary facilities is feasible; the fare would remain at the level it is today but no one will travel standing, let alone packed like sardines. It is a matter of human dignity; the design I am talking about can be retrofitted in today’s General coaches and, therefore, there would be no burden of new manufacture of non-AC coaches.

 

These are my basic ideas which are open to critical reviews, inputs and modifications. I will wait for reactions before writing the next blog in the series.

 

(To be continued…)

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