Strategic Management 1

Case study on Indian railways

Group: Bhoothnath
Members
Ayush Bindal -2009120
Aditi Goel -2009117
Kanika Sharma - 2009115
Govind Chipalkatti - 2009106
Gaurav Modi - 2009082
Janit Yadav - 2009088
Introduction
Indian Railways (I R ) is the state- owned Railway Company of India, which owns and operates most of
the country's rail transport. It is overseen by the Ministry of Railways of the Government of India. Indian
Railways has one of the largest and busiest rail networks in the world, transporting over 18 million
passengers and more than 2 million tonnes of freight daily. It is one of the world's largest commercial
or utility employers, with more than 1.4 million employees. The railways traverse the length and
breadth of the country, covering 6, 90 9 stations over a total route length of more than 63,327
kilometers (39,350 mi). As to rolling stock, IR owns over 200,000 (freight) wagons, 50,000 coaches and
8,000 locomotives. Railways were first introduced to India in 1853. By 1947, the year of India's
independence, there were forty-two rail systems. In 1951 the systems were nationalized as one unit,
becoming one of the largest networks in the world. IR operates both long distance and suburban rail
systems on a multi- gauge network of broad, metro and narrow gauges..

History
A plan for a rail system in India was first put forward in 1832, but no further steps were taken for
more than a decade. In 1844, the Governor General of India Lord Hardinge allowed private
entrepreneurs to set up a rail system in India. Two new railway companies were created and the East
India Company was asked to assist them. The first train in India became operational in 1851.

The Second World War severely weakened the railways as trains were diverted to the Middle East and
the railway workshops were converted into war ammunition workshops. At the time of independence
in 1947, a large portion of the railways went to the then newly formed Pakistan.
The existing rail networks were abandoned in favour of zones in 1951 and a total of six zones came
into being in 1952. As the economy of India improved, almost all railway production units were
diagnosed. By 1985, steam locomotives were phased out in favour of diesel and electric locomotives.
The entire railway reservation system was streamlined with computerization in 1995.

Some Facts
1. The total route length of Indian railway is approximately 63,000 kms.
2. The first electric train was opened in February 1925 on Mumbai suburban railway on Mumbai
Victoria Terminus (VT) – Kurla branch line.
3. As on 31st march, 20 0 4 the electrified route was 17,503 kms.
4. The Indian railway is the largest in the Asia and second largest in the world after the USSR.
5. The total number of railway station in India is more then 7,000.
6. The Indian railway operates approximately 7,525 trains’ daily covering 7,031 railway stations.
7. The largest platform in India is at Kharagpur. The length is 2,733 feet. It is situated in west
Bengal.
8. The longest railway tunnel is Konkan railway tunnel i.e. 65 kms.
9. The longest rail bridge is across Godavari River. The length is 10,052 feet.
10. The largest marshalling yard is at Mughalsarai.
11. The third class in the Indian railway was abolished in 1974. Now there are s even classes - AC-
1s t, AC-2T, AC-3T, Sleeper, AC chair car, first class and second class.
12. Railway set up a fund in 1974 to give financial assistance to victims of railway accidents.
Pest analysis

Political

The IR is deeply entrenched with Indian politics it is not just owned by the government. It is a separate
ministry. The IR is at the mercy of the Indian budget and co-operation. There has always been concerns
over regioinalism and political gains derived out of the department. The head of railways is also a
political minister so the discrepancies in politics most deeply effects the IR.

Economic

The economic conditions of India are very robust and promising. The high growth coupled with
increasing willingness to spend and rising affordability have the rub of green for the railways. The
increasing number of middle class is the most important factor in the growth of demand but this
situation has led to a demand surplus difficult to manage and an operational nightmare.

Social

The IR has very high responsibility towards the society and public. The middle class in India looks to
railways as a special entity and has a deep connect with it. The IR has a responsibility to help the
achievement of the economic objectives of balanced growth and industrialization. The IR has a
peculiarly high demand amongst the families which make for their major customer segment.

Technological

The IR has been a large laggard in this department. The modern it MIS and ERP systems have a lot to
offer in this regard. Although the railway started with the e ticketing it did not manage to eliminate the
hassle at the railway stations. The use of modern technology such as sms service, GPS systems ticket
kiosks and more agents are the need of the hour.

SWOT ANALYSIS

Strength

 Indian railways is a 100% Government of India owned organization.

 Exhaustive railway network across the country.
 Strong financial backing traditionally from Ministry of Finance and recently from Asian
Development Bank and World Bank.
 It is the biggest organization in the world in terms of employee strength. It employed 1.6 million
people as on 2009.
 Technological improvements like PRS system, online ticket reservation, freight operations
information systems etc.
 Luxurious as well as affordable means of transportation for a common man.
  Palace on wheels is considered one of the 10 greatest railway journeys in the world.

Weakness

 Delay in getting approvals and funds for new proposals.

 Corruption within the department.
 Lack of proper safety measures. Despite taking measures the number of accidents has remained
high. The no. of accidents per train kilometers .20 in 2008-09.
 Over utilization of existing assets and resources.
 The number of pensioners of Indian Railways is around 11.5 lakh, and the pension bill continues
to rise every year.
 Indian Railways faces the constraints of infrastructure, particularly line capacity on busy routes,
and terminal detentions leading to delayed trains and mismanagement of traffic.
 Empirically, countries like India show a transport elasticity exceeding 1. The elasticity of rail
transport to overall GDP for the period from 1970-71 till 2008-09 has been assessed, however,
at 0.79
 The addition of new lines has averaged a mere 220 kms per year, as compared to the Chinese
Railways which has achieved over 1,000 kms per annum
 The data and bar diagram below suggests that there is a shortfall in the completion of up
gradation of stations compared to targets. This shows the long gestation period and
procrastination of work.

Opportunities

 Strong possibility for railways to capture 90% of container traffic.

 With the airline industry facing severe crisis, post recession Indian railways can encash on this
opportunity
 By offering air-conditioned coaches in the local trains, they can target the upper segment of the
market.
 Public Private Partnership will help in increasing profits for the Railways.
Threats

 Improvement of other infrastructure like roadways can result in customers switching to other
modes of transportation
 Low cost airlines post competition for the Indian railways.
 Absence of passenger facility will drive away the customer to private modes of transport.
 Indian railways is losing its market Share in passenger and freight Business.
 There is capacity constraint – how to balance demand against available capacity.

Driving Forces for freight service revamping

 Studies have revealed that neither the existing manufacturing facilities for manufacturing
locomotives were enhanced and nor the external procurement was adequately pursued. So the
augmentation of locomotives somehow did not keep pace with the growth of the traffic. A huge
amount of money which was separately allocated for this remains unutilised.
 The various initiatives envisaged for capacity augmentation, throughput enhancement, port
connectivity works, and up-gradation of permanent way were plagued by procedural delays and
are behind schedule.
 So in the nutshell the infrastructure augmentation was not commensurate with the projected
growth in freight traffic.
 Major terminals that can handle more than 30 rakes per month including those identified for
modernization are deficient in basic facilities leading to heavy terminal detentions of rolling
stock which needs to be urgently addressed
 Customers feel that mechanism of supplying rakes per their demand have huge deficit and
needs improvement. The worst part is that various schemes announced to capture traffic are
operating sporadically in some zones. In all Railways needs to restructure its marketing strategy
to capture or to improve its market share.

Impeditements
 Locomotive augmentation is hampered by the capacity and manufacturing constraints at the
two locomotive manufacturing units at Varanasi and Chittaranjan.
 Only a paltry 31 to 51 % of the contracted quantity of Wagon are being supplied by the public
and private Wagon manufacturers
 The process of capacity augmentation is marker with official meddling, missed targets, cost
escalations and shoddy planning
 Customers feel that mechanism of supply of rakes to customers is inefficient
 Quality of periodic maintenance in locomotive sheds was poor as a substantial 25 per cent of
locomotives failed on account of poor workmanship. The time involved in train examination in
wagon maintenance depots continued to be beyond the envisaged norm due to operational and
manpower constraints apart from deficient infrastructure
 The freight incentive scheme introduced to improve the market share was not successful.
Secondly scheme wise data not maintained and performance of the individual scheme was not
evaluated

New Strategies
 Need to expedite the process of augmentation of rolling stocks so that it matches with the
growth of the freight traffic in India
  Contract management policies should be made very stringent and defaults in supply by both
public and private manufacturers should be strictly dealt with
 Focus on enhancing the quality of locomotive maintenance and address the operational and
infrastructural constraints
 Basic facilities should be provided at all the freight terminals. The process of Modernization of
freight terminals should be expedited and implemented in all the zones
 Need to evaluate the incremental loading derived from incentive schemes and accordingly will
modify the scheme to capture the market share
 Ned to attract private sector financing in some of the infrastructure projects.
 Need to assess the reasons behind the current state of affairs. Also need to explore new ways to
capture traffic

Driving forces for introducing new IT measures

 Higher demand for Freight and Passenger transport, with planned economic growth
 Need for capacity enhancement in the Railway network over the next 10-15 years
 Technological uprgadation for better maintenance of railway assets
 Greater competition from Roadways, with major investments in Highway network upgradation
 Increase freight market share through higher availability of services at competitive prices
 Greater attention to passenger services and safety
 Heavily subsidised passenger fares, distorted passenger pricing
 Upgradation of the Railway Production units for improved efficiency and productivity

USING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY FOR GREATER EFFICIENCY

 A large complex Infrastructure System such as the Indian Railways can benefit greatly from the
intelligent use of IT
 Objectives
o Freight revenue enhancement
o Passenger revenue enhancement
o Improved and optimised service

Agency for implementation of IT

 EDP Centers
 CRIS
 Zonal MIS Groups
 LRDSS Group Under Planning Cell

CRIS - INTERNAL SERVICE PROVIDER FOR IT ON IR

 Design, development and implementation of computer based information systems and
associated communication networks and products and other systems
 Technical support and services to develop, set up, operate and maintain any computerised
system and the underlying infrastructure

Passenger reservation system

 PRS networking of entire indian railways completed in april, 1999.
  PRS is running currently at 1,200 locations, deploying 4,000 terminals , covering journeys of
3,000 trains and executing one million passenger transactions per day.
 Internet booking of tickets was started in august 2002.
 Tatkal has been converted from a separate coach to a normal quota and enabled for all trains in
2004
 Internet booking timings extended to 4:00 a.m. – 11:30 p.m. From march 2005.
Suggestions
 Display of Coach-wise Berth/Seat Vacancy Status
 Reduction in Waiting List Numbers by utilizing vacant journey-legs of berths
 E – Ticketing
 Scheme of Frequent Rail Travellers (SOFT)
 Hand-held Terminals for TTEs Fund allocated for this work
 Web based Ticket auction
 Disaster backed PRS sites for business continuity.
 Migration to RDBMS Architecture.

Works in progress in Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS)

 UTS is planned to be implemented at 500 more stations during this year
 Thin Client based UTS successfully implemented on East Central Railway in March 2005. It is
planned to gradually extend thin client based UTS to other locations so that ticketing activity can
continue even if the communication link or the server goes down for some time.
 Business Continuity for UTS under all circumstances the most important objective . inter-cluster
UTS operation migration plannedto ensure continuous ticketing under all circumstances.

Freight Operations Information System

 An on line real time system for management and control of freight traffic
 User driven design and implementation
 Foundations for a total logistics system

Suggestions
 Control Office Applications = TVC, MDU, WAT, KUR AND KGP AND Entire network of TVC – HWH
Section before the end of this year
 Networked Crew management system for Central and western Railway
 MIS – Data Warehousing and Data Mining – Initially for one zone and one division planned
 Payment gateway for more major customers
 Web enabling of FOIS
 Revenue Accounting System
 RFID – immediate need for Pilot Project

Coaching Operation Information System

  COIS Phase I - Punctuality Module implemented with Information Feeding Terminals provided in
all Divisional controls, Zonal headquarters and in Railway Board.
 Punctuality reports for Divisions, Zonal Railways and Railway Board
 COIS Phase II - Coach Management System (CMS) under testing
 Phase iii –time tabling

Workshop Computerisation
 Project to be completed in 2 phases.
 1st Phase includes 16 workshops on which the work is under progress. To be completed by the
end of this year
 In phase – 2, 15 more workshops will be considered for implementation. Estimate sanctioned.
 Three major modules
o Rolling Stock Management (RMS)
o Production Planning and Control (PPC)
o Machine & Plant (M&P).
 Training of staff and procurement of hardware is in progress.

Health Management Information System (HIMS)

 A centralized solution for implementation of HMIS across all the hospitals and health units of IR
 A prototype for some of the basic modules of HMIS developed and given for testing to Vadodara
division
 A proposal for development and deployment of HMIS as pilot project on western railway is
submitted to railway board and approval awaited

Other projects
 Rail Budget Compilation System (RBCS) . A web-enabled works programme management system
is being developed and linked to same
 Comprehensive Accounting & Transaction System (CATS) for RDSO
 Comprehensive Pay Roll Processing System (CPPS) for DLW
 Railway Officers Information System (ROIS)
 Data Center for Zonal railways
 MIS for zonal railways

It strategies of IR
 Applications should transcend boundaries of railway organisation and go into the domain of the
customer.
 Implement decision support systems
 Integration with communication systems and other technologies.-use of Internet, mobile
phones, hand held terminals, universal product code readers etc
 Manage continuous improvement in technology
  Ticketing Solutions (Centralised, Stand-alone, Mobile, Smart Card, Self Service, Internet etc.);
value added services to customer
 On line and e-enabled Freight Management System
 Integrated revenue accountal system
 Train Charting and Control Systems
 RFID based Wagon/Parcel Tracking Systems
 Integration of Railway Systems with Railway Station Systems
 Integrated Materials Management System / Fixed assets mgmt
 Safety Systems (GPS, Embedded Systems)
 GIS based Track Maintenance Systems

Value chain analysis for private public partnership

Primary activities
The core activities comprise transportation of freight and passengers (running of trains and owning of
assets)

Inbound logistics

 Stocking approximately one lakh different type of item in approximately 200 stores depots
spread throughout the country.
 Arranging inspection of these stocked items.
 Distribution of these stocked items by multi-modal logistics to various consumption centers.

Operations
Indian Railways has one of the largest and busiest rail networks in the world, transporting over 18
million passengers and more than 2 million tonnes of freight daily. It is one of the world's largest
commercial or utility employers, with more than 1.4 million employees. The railways traverse the length
and breadth of the country, covering 6,909 stations over a total route length of more than 63,327
kilometres (39,350 mi). As to rolling stock, IR owns over 200,000 (freight) wagons, 50,000 coaches and
8,000 locomotives. This function due to its strategic importance needs to be most closely maintained
with the IR.
Outbound Logistics
The IR has a big responsibility to transport the various freight and cargo to numerous destinations. The
complexity of operations of the IR is a nightmare. The logistics for the freight and other passengers’
posses the biggest challenge to the IR. The scheduling and utilizing of the resources of the IR has been
the primary agenda for many years and the constraint and pressure of Govt. budgets calls for more
professional and focused management.
Marketing and sales
The marketing of IR has been very limited and in this sector the govt. needs to borrow cues from the
private sector. The IR does not create any aspiration drive for the public on the contrary it deters many.
The sales point and customer experience at the point of sales does not have much to write about.

Services
The IR primarily falls in the service sector domain and hence the importance of satisfying the customers
becomes further more paramount. The services of the IR currently are not properly augmented there is
scope for development of services like motels restaurants phone tracking and sms updates. Apart from
this there is very little emphasis on the quality of service given presently.

Secondary activities

Procurement

 Procurement & distribution of Spare parts, Oil, Greases and Lubricants & other related general items
to consignees spread over 7300 stations over all Indian Railways for day to day operation,
maintenance of trains, rolling stock, etc.
 Maintenance of Coaches, Wagons and for in-house manufacture of items.
 Procurement and supply of sub assemblies and components to the production units for manufacture
of new Diesel Locomotives, Electric Locomotives, Coaches and Wagons.

Firm infrastructure

 The total route length of Indian railway is approximately 63,000 kms.

 As on 31st march, 2004 the electrified route was 17,503 kms.
 The Indian railway largest in the Asia and second largest in the world afterthe USSR.
 The total number of railway station in India is more than 7000.

Human resource management

Indian Railways is the World’s largest employer with about 1.4 million employees. Its duties include
running schools and colleges for the children of the railway staff, medical healthcare facilities for the
railway staff. The PPP should be empathic towards this employees and maintain or try to uplift their
status. It has already been stated earlier that the Indian railways is the largest employer in the
world. As a result there has been a 140% increase in wages and pension liabilities, from Rs.
19,595 crore in 2003-04 to Rs. 47,168 crore in 2009-10.

Technology development
The technology has lot to offer to the IR the lack of use of technology has been one of the severe
criticisms for the IR the orperational complexity of the railways can be better managed through active
use of MIS and ERP systems. Also this function can be very conveniently outsourced to increase the
efficiency of the entire IR.
Outsourcing non value added activities
In this initiative, the control of the strategic assets would remain completely with the government and
operations would be funded by the users resulting in true public private partnership initiative.

Corporatization:
The Railways should have a public sector holding company with the board of directors headed by an
Executive Chairman. The mandate to the company should be to establish & operate the railways net
work efficiently and generate surplus revenue for redeployment into existing and new projects. The
government funding of new infrastructure projects through budget along with operational subsidies on
certain sectors and activities have to be accepted for say first ten years till new model stabilizes.

Fortunately for the railways, there is no problem of finding markets with ever growing population. They
just have to be competitive with other alternative means of transportation through technology up
gradation and passenger focus.

The restructuring of Railways therefore should aim at focus on infrastructure development, technology
development, and operational efficiency. The first two aspects are of strategic importance and therefore
should be handled through Strategic Business Units. Weakness of the railways is in operational efficiency
and therefore restructuring of the operations should aim at improving the same.

Strategic Business Units:

The most significant approach to run the railways in future should involve separation of ownership &
management of infrastructure & technology development and operationsThis calls for setting up two
SBUs to set up new and manage existing infrastructure for dedicated corridors of passengers and freight
separately. The strategy to increase speed levels needs to be driven by separate SBU for modernization
and technology up gradation of existing infrastructure of the net works. Logically, the same SBU can
establish infrastructure for high speed bullet trains

Public Private Partnership:

PPP has been accepted by railways for certain limited and selective aspects. To crystallize an option, let
us look at road transport which is the most efficient mode today. The infrastructure of roads and
highways net work is by and large owned and established by the government. But the rolling stock on
the roads is owned by millions of individuals and thousands of companies in private as well as public
sector. This little difference is an important driver of efficiency & productivity. Can we not adopt &
adapt the same model suitably to rolling stock for railways?

Own Your Wagon Scheme has been in operation in a very limited sense. I would like to suggest a
separate subsidiary company “Indian Railways Rolling Stock Company” (IRRS), under the holding
company, which would own the rolling stock, ferry the cargo & passengers and be the user of the
railways network and infrastructure. IRRS should have the 99 year lease for use of the network with
lease rentals to be paid to the respective SBUs for providing infrastructure and technology along with
maintenance services. IRRS should therefore focus on only operations. SBUs for infrastructure &
technology would be responsible for their respective activities at their own costs recovered through
rentals & annual maintenance contracts (AMC) from IRRS.
The IRRS should be the entity for partnership of Indian Railways with private companies & the public. It
can raise finances by going public and offering shareholding and long term bonds so that the rolling
stock is indirectly owned by the millions of shareholders and thousands of corporate entities. IRRS
should have only controlling interests through equity from the holding company for strategic reasons.
The net result of this approach would enable the political establishment to focus on budgeting only for
investments in infrastructure and technology on one hand and operational subsidy on the other hand. It
is needless to say that the operations should be generating enough revenue to offset the expenditure
and generate surplus. It is understandable that the decisions like passenger fares and freight rates have
to be decided in larger public interest and therefore an element of selective subsidy can not be avoided.

This approach will also take the pressure off the exchequer for funding resources for operations of the
railways freeing the same for infrastructure development. This would also bring in substantial
improvement in the customer orientation, operational efficiency and private sector participation in
management of services.

The Government of India should look forward for financial support to bridge the viability gap of
infrastructure projects undertaken through Public Private Partnerships.
PPP can be done in following scenarios:

Firstly, where the Government of India recognizes that there is significant deficit in the availability of
physical infrastructure across different sectors and that this is hindering economic development.

Secondly, where the development of infrastructure requires large investments that cannot be
undertaken out of public financing alone, and that in order to attract private capital as well as the
techno-managerial efficiencies associated with it, the Government is committed to promoting Public
Private Partnerships (PPPs) in infrastructure development.

Thirdly, where the Government of India recognizes that infrastructure projects may not always be
financially viable because of long gestation periods and limited financial returns, and that financial
viability of such projects can be improved through Government support.

The need of the hour is to develop new business models and invite domestic investment through PPP
mode in areas like new lines to world class stations, auto hubs to ancillary industries, manufacturing
units of rolling stock to multi–modal logistic parks, high speed train corridors to port connectivity and
multi-level parking to mine connectivity etc. Domestic investors have tremendous scope in Railways. It
will facilitate large quantum of investment in Railways and provide ready business to investors.
Therefore, it will be a win-win option for all.

Business model
Value Proposition: identifying and building competitive advantages that cannot be easily
replicated.

• Railway acts as a prime mover to the nation, ferrying people and goods across the places.

• To complete this Endeavour it uses approximately 65000 km of rail tracks and over 7151 railway
stations which forms the third largest network.
 • IR owns a fleet of 222379 wagons, 42441 coaches and 7910 locomotives which acts as a
backbone of the entire rail system.

• It runs 160251 trains, including 9550 passenger trains, carrying about 1.6 million tonnes of
freight and about 15 million passengers daily.

• Indian Railway carries a huge variety of goods ranging from mineral ores, agricultural produce,
petroleum, milk and vehicles.

Value Configuration: Processes by which inputs are converted into finished products or services
 Indian Railways carries 750 million tons of freight this year, more than the 726 million tons that
had been targeted, Batra said.
 The utility expects to carry 6.5 billion people in the year ending March 31, 2007, compared with
6 billion people in the previous year, the official said.
 Improving wagon mobility and availability by
 reducing terminal detentions by increasing goods sheds working hours
 improving the infrastructure at the goods sheds;
 rationalizing maintenance practices by extending the maintenance cycle of closed circuit
rakes (CC Rakes) to 35 days/7500 kms from 15 days/4500 kms; introducing "premium"
examination at nominated depots with a validity of 15 days
 using FOIS (freight operations information system) for better monitoring; complete roll-out
of rake management system module enabling on-line monitoring of freight train operations

Value Appropriation: Identifying Customer Needs, Creating awareness & getting Sales.
 Tatkal scheme introduced in 1997 was revised in 2004. The scheme was further revised in 2009
allowing a reduced advance reservation period of 2 days
 Dynamic pricing policy was introduced on 1.04.2007 for passenger fares through which varying
discounts were given for busy and lean seasons to attract traffic especially in the upper classes.
In popular trains, class-wise discounts indicated for the busy season were applicable throughout
the year
 Upgradation Scheme: With a view to optimising the utilisation of available accommodation in
trains, a scheme was launched in 2006 to upgrade full fare paying passengers to higher class
against available vacant accommodation in all Mail/Express trains having sleeping
accommodation.
 Frequent Travellers Scheme: To encourage passengers of higher class to undertake journey by
rail, a Frequent Travellers scheme was launched whereby a Frequent Traveller could redeem
points earned to get a complementary train trip after a certain number of reward points had
accumulated. Till 30th April 2009, 86,348 passengers had registered themselves under this
scheme, out of which 47,649 were active users.
 Expansion of the computerized PRS and the Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS), along with i-
ticketing and e-ticketing have been a great convenience to passengers.
 Launch of the 139 global enquiry system all over India has been a major passenger friendly
initiative. With the spread of the coaching information system, it has been possible to provide
updated information regarding running of trains. Public grievances, however, continued to be
 aired regarding inaccurate information being given, especially with regard to the late running of
trains.
 Under Station modernization (Touch & Feel scheme) station have been beautified by
improvements to circulating area, façade of station buildings and better lighting at platforms,
concourses etc.

Strategies to improve business model

Expansion

Add more railway lines:

This will greatly help the congestion which in turn will increase the speed of trains. In last 58 years,
railway line has spread to 64,015 kms, adding just 10,419 kms, an annual average of only 180 kms.
That is why our target is to add 25,000 kms of new lines in the next ten years..

High Speed Corridors

Plans are also afoot to study the feasibility of high speed passenger rail link between major metropolises
to improve connectivity and slash travel time for distances of 600- 1000 km to within 2 1/2 to 4 hours.

Develop Northeast Region:

Propose to draw up a Master Plan for the development of rail infrastructure in the Northeast region in
consultation with the Northeast Development Council and the state authorities concerned.

Rail connections to the neighbouring countries:

Surveys for the five new lines have been conducted for rail connectivity with Nepal. Out of these lines, it
is proposed to take up new line from Jogbani to Biratnagar and gauge conversion of Jayanagar to
Bijalpura with extension to Bardibas.

Complete Mechanization Plan For Track Relaying of Routes of IR

A) Plain Track Relaying:
Assuming that 7.5% of track to relaid every year .Total laying potential for a year comes 2342 km.
Total number of TRT and PQRS available on IR are 8 and 40 sets respectively.Taking progress of
TRT and PQRS as 12km per month and 5 km per month per se respectively.Total relaying to done by
these machines in ayear is 3197 km. Therefore no additional machine required.
 In addition to these machines equal numbers of WSTs ,DTSs and BRMs are required for tamping
and ballast profiling.
B) Turnout Relaying
 Assuming that 7.5% of turnouts to relaid every year .Total laying potential for a year comes
2070. Taking progress of relaying a T-28 as 12 turnouts in month.Total number of T-28 required
are 16 nos.
 NOTE: In calculating machine requirement 10% extra machines have been taken for taking care
their failures during service and for its schedule maintenance from above total requirement of
machines for relaying as under:
S.No. Name of Machine Total Req.
1 TRT 8
2 PQRS 40 sets
3 T-28 16
 4 DTS 48
5 BRM 48
6 WST 48
 6.1.3.Additional Staff requirement:
This is given below:
S.N Name of Astt. Chargeman Highly Skilled Khalasi/Khalasi Total
o. machine Foreman cum skilled Fitter helper
cum senior operator
operator 272
1 WST 34 34 68 34 102
2 BRM 66 66 66 66 198 462
3 DTS 75 75 75 75 150
450

Staff for field operation:

Staff for field supervision, technical and general services:

S.No. Category Nos.

1 Assistant engineer 41
2 Foreman 41
3 Highly skilled fitter 81
4 Sr.clerk-cum-materialchaser41
5 Semi-skilled 122
Total 326
Staff for repair and maintenance:
S.NO. Category Nos.
1 Assistant engineer (track machines) 20
2 Shop superintendent (trackmachines) 20
3 Asst. Shop superintendent (trackmachines) 20
4 Asst. foreman (track machines) 41
5 Charge man (track machines) 20
6 Track machine maintainer (HSKI/HSK-II/skilled) 243
7 Head clerk 20
8 Senior clerk 20
9 Draftsman 20
10 Clerk-cum- typist 41
11 DSK 20
12 Store man/material chaser 61
13 Track machine khalasi (unskilled) 284
Total 830

Complete Mechanization Plan For Track Maintenance of Remaining

B.G.Routes of IR
 Total Track Km : 32304 km
 Total Turnout on running lines : 28548 Nos
A) Plain Track Tamping
 Taking a tamping cycle of 18 months (approximately), tamping requirement every year will be
21536 km.
  Taking block availability of about 2.5 hours per day, working of machine for about 24 days in a
month and progress of about 900 m per gross block hour, each high output tamper would do
about 650 km every year.
 Total 36 high output tampers alongwith equal number of DTSs are required for this work .
B) Turnout Tamping
 Taking a tamping cycle of 12 months (approximately), tamping requirement every year will be
28548 Nos.
 Taking block availability of about 3 hours per day, working of machine for about 24 days in a
month and progress of about 1 turnout per gross block hour, each turnout tamper would do about
850 turnouts every year.
 Total 37 high output tampers are required for this work.
C) Deep Screening
 Taking a Deep Screening cycle of 10 years, screening requirement every year will be 3230 km.
 Taking block availability of about 2.5 hours per day, working of Ballast cleaning machine for
about 24 days in a month (for 8 months in a year) and progress of about 120 meter per gross
block hour, each BCM would do about 60 km every year.
 Total 57 BCMs alongwith equal number of WSTs, DTSs and BRMs are required for this work.

D) Shoulder Screening
 Taking a Shoulder Screening cycle of 10 years, screening requirement every year will be 3230
km.
 Taking block availability of about 2.5 hours per day, working of Shoulder Ballast cleaning
machine for about 24 days in a month (for 8 months in a year) and progress of about 250 meter
per gross block hour, each BCM would do about 120 km every year.
 Total 29 SBCMs are required for this work.
 NOTE: In calculating machine requirement 10% extra machines have been taken for taking care
their failures during service and for its schedule maintenance From above total requirement of
machines for periodic maintenance activities is as under:

S.No. Name of Machine Total Req.

1 High output tamper(CSM,O9-3X) 36
2 UNI 37
3 BCM 57
4 SBCM 29
5 DTS 93
6 BRM 57
7 WST 57

Complete Mechanization Plan For Track Relaying of Remaining

B.G.Routes of IR
 Total Track Km : 32304 km
 Total Turnout on running lines : 28548 Nos
A)Plain Track Relaying:
 Assuming that 7.5% of track to relaid every year .Total laying potential for a year comes 2423
km.
 Taking progress of PQRS set as 5km per month .Total relaying to done by this machine in a year
is 60km. Therefore 44 number of PQRS sets needed .
 In addition to these machines equal numbers of WSTs ,DTSs and BRMs are required for tamping
and ballast profiling.
 B)Turnout Relaying
 Assuming that 7.5% of turnouts to relaid every year .Total laying potentialfor a year comes 2141.
 Taking progress of relaying a T-28 as 12 turnouts in month.Total number of T-28 required are 17
nos.
 NOTE: In calculating machine requirement 10% extra machines have been taken for taking care
their failures during service and for its schedule maintenance. From above total requirement of
machines for relaying as under:

S.No. Name of Machine Total Req.

1 PQRS 44 sets
2 T-28 17
3 DTS 44
4 BRM 44
5 WST 44
 In above table it is assumed that Unimats used in maintenance will be utilized in tamping of
turnouts laid by T-28.

Additional Staff requirement:

 This is given below:
Staff for field operation:
S.N Name of Astt. Chargema Highly Skilled Khalasi/Khalas TOTAL
o. machine Foreman n cum skilled Fitter i helper
cum senior operator
operator
1 CSM09-3X 8 8 16 8 24 64
2 WST 101 101 202 101 303 808
3 UNI 9 9 9 18 18 54
4 BCM 49 98 98 49 196 490
5 SBCM 29 58 58 29 116 290
6 PQR 60 60 60 60 60 180
7 T-28 28 16 8 8 24 72
8 BRM 101 101 101 101 303 707
9 DTS 137 137 137 137 274 822

Staff for field supervision, technical and general services:

S.No. Category Nos.
1 Assistant engineer 123
2 Foreman 123
3 Highly skilled fitter 245
4 Sr.clerk-cum-material chaser 123
5 Semi-skilled 368
Total 982
 At present there are sufficient number of machines available on IR to switch over to complete
mechanisation of track maintenance and relaying on Group A, B and C routes. But for better quality
shortfall of WSTs, BRMs and DTSs to be made good.
 For remaining B.G. routes complete mechanization will take some time .The track machines are
sanctioned through various RSP and it has been planned to achieve full mechanisation by 2012 as per
IRMP (2005-2010). Therefore it is expected that by 2012 these will also completely mechanised.
 There is already shortage of staff for existing track machines in some zonal rlys and due to additional
staff required for new track machines this problem only aggravate. Therefore planning of creation of
posts and their recruitment need to hasten.
 Zonal railways have tendency to carry out works, specially screening, relaying of turnouts etc
manually at the cost of quality of the output. We may have to impress upon the zonal railways to
work sincerely and honestly towards achieving complete mechanisation of track maintenance.

PASSENGERS COMFORT
Clean Drinking Water:
Everyday 1.8 crore passengers need water, food, toilets, cleanliness, safety and security. To provide
basic facility of clean drinking water, bottling plants should be setup with the mandate that bottled
Fresh Water will be provided at stations at much cheaper rates.

Alerts:
The following initiatives for improving passenger and customer satisfaction should be taken:

i. SMS updates of reservation status and punctuality of trains to passengers,

ii. SMS updates on the movement of wagons to freight customers
iii. RFID technology for tracking of wagons carrying coal and iron ore on three zonal railways.

Increase Parking Space:

Air-space at stations in large cities will be leveraged to build multi-level parking complexes through the
PPP route.
Introduce modern trolleys:
Railways propose to introduce modern trolleys at all important stations which will be handled by
uniformed attendants to assist senior citizens and women passengers in boarding and alighting from
coaches, along with their luggage comfortably.

Eticket based mobile vans

Eticket based mobile vans will run for issuing reservation tickets in government medical college
hospitals, High Courts, Districts Courts, university campuses etc. To give more facilities to the common
people, Railways proposes to open ticket centres at district headquarters and village panchayats with
infrastructure support from local government/semigovernment authorities and private organizations.

PASSENGERS SAFETY
During1960s, the average number of accidents/year were around 1393 . However, the average number
of accidents/year came down to 866, 757 and 464 during1970s,1980s and 1990s respectively.
Accidents per million train kilometers were 5.5 during 1960-61 and this has come down to 0.65 during
2000-2001.
Broad causes of accidents on IR
 Railway staff failure 65.67%
 Equipment failure 08.44%
 Failure of other than 17.46%
Railway staff Sabotage 03.45%
The following were the requirement of renewal :
 Arrears of Track Renewals (BG) -12,260 Kms.
 Distressed Bridges -262 Nos.
 Overaged Signalling Gear -1,560 Stations
 Overaged Coaches (BG) -1,322 Vehicle Units
 Overaged Wagons (BG) -34,000

To reduce human failures, a major technical input of track circuiting in station areas has been inducted
in the system. To have faster and better communication, Walkie – talkie sets have been provided to
drivers & Guards of all trains. Train operation during foggy and inclement weather is monitored closely
to avoid any mishap.To monitor track geometry, sophisticated track recording cars, osillograph cars and
portable accelerometers are used. Nearly 10,000 accident-prone four-wheeler wagons CRT’s have been
phased out from the system in the last two years.
• Drivers and Guards are also being progressively provided with LED based electronic flashing
lamps.
• To reduce dependence on human elements and to prevent collision of trains, a device ‘block
proving axle counter’ has been installed at 175 stations.
• To detect ‘rail fractures’ and ‘weld failures’ double rai Ultrasonic Flaw detectors and Self
Propelled Ultrasonic Rail Testing cars are being procured.
• Modern simulators for training of drivers are getting installed and used in various training
centers.
• Automatic switching “ON” of flasher lights of locomotives in emergencies has been planned.
• Level Crossing having heavy traffic density are being progressively interlocked with signals.

 Safety from Collisions: We have to go in for new, cutting-edge equipment to prevent accidents.
Anti-collision device (ACD) and train protection warning system (TPWS) are two such devices.

 Unmanned Crossings: Accidents at unmanned level crossings are a source of deep concern to
all of us. Even now, there are about 17,000 unmanned level crossings. These should be covered
in the shortest possible time.

 Training of loco pilots: To strengthen the skills and abilities of loco pilots, a state-of-the-art
advanced loco pilot training centre