Made In India, Engineless Trains Coming Soon; Rail Analytics Will Save Rs 720 Crore!

Indian Railways is all set to unleash a revolution in locomotives or engines in coming days. And this massive transformation will be fuelled by Make in India initiative, and some smart analytics powered moves.

Exciting times ahead for Indian Railways!

Make in India Engineless Trains Coming Soon!

Starting June, Indian Railways will launch engineless trains, which will be self-propelled on electric traction, something like Metro trains.

These would be Made in India, and each train will cost approximately Rs 100 crore each: There would be 16 coaches, and each coach will cost Rs 6 crore. If we compare the coaches, and the facilities provided by similar European manufactured coaches, then the overall cost will be 40% cheaper.

These trains would be running at 160 km/hour speed.

Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai, which is owned by Indian Railways, will manufacture these special engineless trains.

Sudhanshu Mani, ICF general manager said,

“This will be the first ever semi high-speed train that is being manufactured by Indian Railways on its own. The train set would be able to run at the speed of 160 km per hour, making it the fastest in the country,”

Around 2500 such coaches would be made by ICF by 2020, and as per reports, the first trail run would be made on Shatabdi Trains, all over the nation.

ICF is also manufacturing light body aluminium trains, based on European standards.

Mani said,

“The aluminium train set is likely to roll out in 2020 and it will be much more energy-efficient and will follow the European standards and will be kind of a leapfrog for rail technology in India..”

Recently, Indian Railways unleashed a major locomotive revolution, when they successfully converted diesel loco to ‘Make in India’ electric locomotive.

Rail Analytics To Save Rs 720 Crore!

Meanwhile, Indian Railways has announced that they will now use analytics and deep learning to save Rs 720 crore on locomotive allocations for various trains.

Right now, there are 3,300 electric and diesel locomotive passenger trains across India, and via schedule called as locomotive links, engines are allocated to these trains.

However, the problem with such cyclic allocation is that locomotives are assigned to trains even if the train is not running, or has changed the route.

Now on, Railways will use statistics and data to understand which locomotive needs to be assigned, allocated to which train, and this will help save lots of money for the Indian Rail.

A unique, first of its kind software-based decision support system will help to free up 30 diesel and 42 electric locomotives every year, which can be used for freight trains to earn revenues.

An official press release said,

“The decision support system utilizes a mathematical model to work out the minimum number of locomotives required to run all the passenger trains as per timetable while meeting the maintenance and operations requirements.”

As per various estimates, close to Rs 720 crore can be saved every year from this analytics-based allocation of locomotives.

This pilot project is being headed by Transformation Cell of Railway Board.

We will keep you updated, as we receive more updates related to the locomotive revolution of Indian Railways!