Northeast Frontier Railway takes major initiatives to enhance safety standards

GUWAHATI: The first three months of the current financial year saw minimal passenger services running in Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) areas due to suspension of services owing to the situation arising out of the outbreak of COVID-19. Taking advantage of this, N F Railway had carried out major maintenance and improvement works to enhance safety of train operation.

Two major components of safe train operations are – optimal condition of the rail on which the train runs and the foundation on which the rails are laid. The rails are laid on sleepers and the foundation is strengthened with small stones called ballasts. While the rails need to be checked for defects like fracture and then replaced periodically, the quantity and quality of the ballast is also of utmost importance. The ballast need to be replaced / replenished and packed underneath the rails periodically which is called screening and tamping / packing of ballasts. N. F. Railway uses modern track machines such as Dynamic Tamping Machine Unimat-4S, RM80-92U etc. for these works.

Track Maintenance: Total 106 km rail were replaced last year and the lockdown period has been extensively used to replace rails in all five divisions of N. F. Railway. 380km rail replacement is planned this year. Ultra-Sound Fault Detection (USFD) testing had been used to detect fault in rails and several hundreds of welded rail joints were checked during the lockdown period. Special drive was launched to attend all points and crossings of New Jalpaiguri, New Bongaigaon and Guwahati yards.

Ballast replenishment: During April-June 34 train loads of ballast were added on railway tracks. For better ride and better life of track deep screening of ballast was carried out with Ballast Cleaning Machines. The following works were carried out utilizing the lockdown period (in 3 months from April to June 2020) for enhancing operational safety by using track machines.

1. Plain Track Tamping was carried out 1592 km of railway line which is 81% more than carried out in corresponding period last year.

2. Turnout Tamping was carried out in 955 turnouts which is 118% more than the number of turnout tamped during the same period last year.

3. Track Stabilization was carried out in 434 km of railway line which is 203% more than the stabilization work carried out during same period last year.

4. Ballast regulation was carried out in 294 km which is 57% more than for the same period last year.

New Box Culverts for flood mitigation: The Guwahati - Lumding section is flood prone and some of the existing bridges were found to be inadequate for letting the water flow from one side to the other. To address the problem, five additional box culverts were installed to the existing bridges so that large amount of water can pass under the track and the risk of breach of track is reduced. The work was carried out during the first phase of lockdown and completed on May 17, 2020 at an estimated cost of Rs 5.4 crore.

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