This New Engine From Indian Railways Is Running At 180 km/hr Speed: How Did It Happen?

Under Make in India initiative, Indian Railways has developed a new rail engine, which is running at 180 km/hr speed.

Soon, Rajdhani Express and Shatabdi Express trains will be running with this high-speed engine.

How did it happen?

Indian Railways’ New Engine With 180 km/hr Speed

A new version of WAP 7 series engine has been manufactured by Chittaranjan Locomotive Works (CLW), which comes under Indian Railways.

This new engine is WAP-7HS, and officially, it has been placed under Ghaziabad shed (WAP-7HS 30750 GZB shed semi-high speed locomotive).

A trial run was conducted in the Kota section, wherein this engine was able to pull off 180 km/hr speed, which is a new record for WAP 7 series railway engines.

Normally, a WAP 7 series engine will pull off a passenger train with 24 coaches at 140 km/hr speed, but this new engine: WAP-7HS ran at 160 km/hr speed, with 24 coaches.

As per reports coming in, very soon, WAP-7HS will be deployed for Shatabdi and Rajdhani Express trains and Duronto as well.

How Did It Happen?

This new engine has been developed completely in India, at the Chittaranjan Locomotive Works (CLW) facilities. In order to make this train high speed, engineers reduced the weight of the train by about 14 tonnes, while at the same time, the gear ratio was changed from 3.6 (72:20) to 3.2 (70:22).

Engineers also did software modifications for the new engine, which was mainly to optimize slip-slide control and traction effort. 

Besides these, extensive simulation and modeling of the new engine were accomplished, at CLW facilities.

Indian Railways’ Pursuit For High Speed

We have already reported how Indian Railways is now extensively focussed on making trains faster, and reduce travel time.

Last year, we reported that Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai is making trains that will run faster than Rajdhani Express and Shatabdi, and soon, Train 18 or Vande Bharat Express was launched.

Then, news came in that the engine-less trains under Vande Bharat Series will be made for Rajdhani and Shatabdi Express as well.

This year in May, Indian Railways announced that new engines and new trains are being developed, which can even run at 180 km/hour. 

Now, the engine is ready, and we hope that more development takes place.

Note here, that in order to run these high-speed trains, we also need good tracks, and this is the reason that tracks on the crucial Golden Quadrilateral – Delhi-Howrah and Delhi-Mumbai are being updated.

We will keep you updated, as more details come in.