Indian Railways are Spurting all Over!
15 Jul 2005
According to a recent edition of the Times of India, Indian Railways latest initiative to reduce train accidents is the buying of ‘SPURT’ cars, which will run on their tracks measuring and identifying rail flaws.
‘SPURT’ stands for Self Propelled Ultrasonic Rail Testing. Those who thought our railway jargon had a monopoly of overdone pneumonics had better think again! But Indian Railways HQ in New Delhi describe their new machines as ‘state of the art’ cars which will detect defects in rails and at welded joints.
Such is their concern, that they have also decided that in future they will use 65 metre long rails rather than the 13 metre lengths, which are their current norm. They say this is to reduce the number of joints.
They quote their train accident statistics in accidents per million train kilometres. A few years ago their rate was 0.44, but this has now reduced to 0.35. Indian Railways draw comfort from comparing their record with a world figure of between 0.32 and 0.31, but are now setting themselves the objective of reducing to 0.17 by 2012!
Last month we reported on Network Rail’s latest initiatives in ultrasonic rail inspection and it is a few years now since we started to use UIC 60 rail. But has anyone thought about the optimum length for a single rolled rail? Ease of installation needs to be balanced against reducing joints and welds. Have we established the optimum length, or are we accepting what the steel producers are offering?