Are there wheels within wheels in Train 18 delays?

Wheels have been in the news recently because the wheels for Train 18/Vande Bharat express, under manufacture at Integral Coach Factory, Chennai, had been ordered on a company in Ukraine and the first lot itself was stuck in the war zone.

 

I reproduce only two of the news items here:

 

Hindustan times

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/stuck-in-ukraine-wheels-of-vande-bharat-trains-to-be-airlifted-to-india-101650819797776.html

 

Live Mint

https://www.livemint.com/news/india/amid-russia-ukraine-war-india-to-airlift-wheels-of-vande-bharat-trains-11650816620501.html

 

The matter has been resolved for the time being with wheels for one rake arriving in Chennai and there is no setback in the timeline for the first rake, which in any case, was not going to be out before June 22. The questions raised, however, need to be addressed and the essence of these questions is simple:

 

Why does India need to import wheels?

Why is India not Atmanirbhar even in a basic part of a train, the wheel?

 

Railroad wheels are largely of two types: cast or roll-forged. One can get into a complicated engineering discussion and propound that forged wheels, their metallurgy and impact strength are more suited for trains, particularly at higher speeds. Perhaps true, but it is not so straightforward. Legacy of development of railroad wheels is basically in play here. While the manufacturers in USA adopted cast wheels, those in Europe and Japan developed forged wheels and after that it has been more about commercial pitching by companies. Since US did not have a vibrant system of passenger trains vis-à-vis Europe, passenger trains worldwide employ only forged wheels; it’s notable that the passenger trains run in the US are also, basically, European designs and even such trains employ forged wheels whereas all freight cars there are fitted with cast wheels.

 

India began its manufacture of wheels decades back with Durgapur Steel Plant (DSP) developing forged wheels for locomotives and coaches and Rail Wheel Factory, Bangalore (RWF) starting with cast wheels for freight wagons. RWF functioned, and functions, well but another plant Rail Wheel Plant, Bela was added in Bihar when the demand for freight wheels showed an increasing trend. Wheels for ICF coaches were also developed by RWF and later, during my tenure at RWF, I, with my team, successfully pushed for use of cast wheels in EMUs as well as Kolkata Metro coaches. Meanwhile, wheels for other Metro coaches continue to be imported as neither the Metro organizations nor IR have shown much interest in indigenization, perhaps because the numbers involved are smaller compared to IR demands.

 

DSP did a good job too in supplying locomotive and ICF coaching wheels, but beset as it is with typical PSU bureaucracy and limited R&D resources, it could not develop, or deliver in large numbers, wheels for newer rolling stocks like LHB coaches and EMD/ ABB locomotives and these wheels continue to be imported in large numbers even today.

 

RWF developed cast wheels for locomotives and LHB coaches too but our preference at RWF, due to assembly-line constraints, was to enter the LHB coaching wheel segment in a big way. The problem was that there existed no evidence of use of cast wheels in passenger trains in the speed range of 120 km/h or above. In spite of extensive trials of cast LHB wheels on-line in coaches, albeit limited at 110 km/h operation, those who approve the use of wheels on IR with those who oversee their work, did not have the commitment and courage to try them out at higher speeds in LHB coaches. I. with my RWF team pushed for it strongly but IR babudom would have none of it. (those interested may see the content of the letter affixed at the end to get a hang of the technical issues involved)

 

Soon thereafter, I moved to ICF as GM and that was the end of the story of cast wheels for LHB coaches. Instead, IR entered into an agreement with Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL) to set up a forged wheel plant at Rae Bareli to manufacture a hundred thousand wheels per year. With this capacity, import of wheels would be a thing of the past. The plant, I understand, is ready for long but its commissioning is nowhere in sight, let alone its full scale operation, stuck, not surprisingly, in contractual disputes.

 

Let me point out a fact about RWF cast wheels which would startle you. RWF has supplied more than 4 million wheels and barring one or two curious cases of wheels failing after twenty years of service (a wheel has a useful life of 3 to 5 years), not one of these has failed. Talk of Six Sigma!! This is multiple times that. Breakage of forged wheels is not uncommon but breakage of a cast wheel? Unheard of.

 

So, did the wheels for the first two rakes of Train 18 really require import? Yes and no. We needed only 256 wheels, a very small number for a forged wheel supplier to take interest in at a reasonable price. DSP, even if it agreed, was not capable to engineer, manufacture and supply the wheels in only 12 months or so that it would be afforded to deliver the wheels after finalization of our bogie design. We soon found that the best option for us was to order the wheel sets complete on a company in Aurangabad, which, in turn, decided to import the wheels from their principle in Czech Republic to keep the stiff timeline in check.

 

I stick my neck out to say that all coaching wheels used in India, including Train 18, LHB and Metros, can be of cast type, without any risk. I am aware, thanks to the bard, that, “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” (Touchstone, As You Like It). So, I speak like a ‘witty fool’, not a ‘foolish wit’, a la Feste in Twelfth Night. If this confidence is too out of the line, we can plan to test such wheels on Dynamometer test bench in Europe under suitable load and speed conditions; it may cost a few crores but the benefit to IR would be immense, not in terms of price much as even the imported wheels are reasonably-priced, thanks to the volumes, but for pride of true Atmanirbharata (self-reliance).

 

I am not saying that given the large volume of wheels for 44 train sets on order, we would have been able to source the wheels in India. That would have been a tall order. But the long-term lesson that we ignore, and keep ignoring, is that,  “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.” (Lucio, Measure for Measure, Shakespeare) Yes, there is no answer, yet, for technical pusillanimity which plagues us, we, the great status-quoists. So, unlike the shahsavār (mounted soldier), who has the honour of falling in battle, would we continue to be cocooned, smugly blissfully safe, like the tifl (child) who crawls happily on his knees?

 

We have four wheel factories in India today. Will someone bell the cat? Unlikely for Train 18 wheels, in any case, as it is too late. But for indigenous LHB wheels, forged and cast both? Let us wait and watch.

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