WHY IS RAILWAY BOARD NOT TOUTING ITS DFC AS THE WORLD’S FIRST !

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Notwithstanding all the talk of Bullet Trains, Railways in India is on way to becoming a freight carrier with slow trains for passenger transport

Railway Board is now fully focused on building DFCs. And, it isn’t serious about raising speed on the Indian Railways’ trunk routes to even 160 kmph.

Seeing Railway Board’s penchant for fancy world records like the world’s firs longest platform at Kharagpur Station and now at Gorakhpur Station, and the world’s tallest railway bridge in making at Chenab, it is surprising that for almost 15 years now, Railway Board hasn’t yet claimed that the Eastern DFC or Western DFC – whichever is completed first – will be the world’s first DFC.

As pointed this out earlier also no country other than India has thought of building a railway line exclusively for carrying freight trains.

Of course there are lines specially built to carry heavy minerals like coal and iron ore, usually from mines to a nearby seaport.

But, even these lines carry some passenger trains. If fact in USA where since 1950s the railway system has been used for carrying mostly freight, these lines, including the transcontinental, also carry Express passenger trains that too at an impressive speed of 160-180 kmph, speed that Indian Railways has still not achieved.

Anyone can read posts on Twitter, how construction of the DFCs has gone against plans to increase speed on the vital existing trunk routes of Indian Railways.

If these two lines were built as a freight + passenger lines with 25 tonnes axle load, instead of DFCs, Indian Railways would have undoubtedly been in a much better position today to raise speed and capacity.

How the plan to build EDFC and WDFC became an escape route to delay higher speed on the Indian Railway network

When the both Eastern & Western DFC projects was announced, Railway Board said when DFC is built in 5 yrs, upgradation work for raising speed on Delhi-Howrah and Delhi-Mumbai lines will be started.

(The original plan was to start upgrading these 2 vital routes in 1997-2002, but it was put on the back-burner. As time passed traffic reached saturation levels, making it difficult to undertake upgradation of tracks.)

As said instead of the DFCs, new 200-250 kmph lines should have been built.

Today the situation is that the DFCs won’t be completed in the next 5 years. So, the plan of upgrading the above 2 routes will be delayed by at least another 5 years (2010-25).

Another question arises: “Why did Railway Board not start upgradation works on the other routes where congestion was not there in 2005?”

Even now there are many routes with no congestion where upgradation can be undertaken.

China raised speed on its existing trunk routes between 1997-2007 in stages to 160 kmph, 180 kmph and finally 200 kmph.

European and several other railways also did it in the same manner in 1970s and 80s.

The fact that India still does not have a single line with 200-250 kmph speeds shows that Railway Board is not serious about Raising Speed.

In fact instead of Ahmedabad-Mumbai Bullet Train line (on Standard Gauge), we should have built a 200-250 kmph Conventional High-Speed line on Broad Gauge that would have been much cheaper and far more beneficial, except that it would take 3 hrs from Mumbai to Ahmedabad whereas the Bullet Train can do it in 2 hr 15 min.

DFC lines are on Broad Gauge. But interoperability with the existing lines will be limited. Only normal freight trains (25 ton axle load) will be able to go on existing lines. The heavy haul trains (32 ton axle load) will not be interoperable.

Nowhere in the world will you find such freight lines except short lines to connect mines with seaports for export or mines to user industries like thermal power plants, steel plants etc. Why is Railway Board spending so much public money when we can build 160-250 kmph lines along existing routes at same cost.

With such an arrangement the new line would carry fast passenger and freight trains and existing line slower passenger and freight trains. This is what all railway systems outside do, why Railway Board wants to make Indian Railways unique hasn’t been explained?

Basically separation of slow and fast traffic is much better. Building a DFC is like buying a 50 room house when you know you won’t need more than 5 rooms.

What can be done now:

  1. First take a policy decision that no more Bullet Train lines and DFC lines for next 15yrs.
  2. Upgrade existing lines, wherever feasible, and build new Conventional High Speed lines for 200-250 kmph.
  3. Convert ongoing Eastern and Western DFCs to normal mixed traffic lines. It is doable.

This way we can build about 15,000 to 18,000 km Conventional High Speed lines to cover four ends of the country at an expenditure of about INR 6 lakh crore.

Now consider that at the current rate of INR 300 crore per km, that amount will be needed to build a line from Delhi to Chennai.

Will Railway Board bite the bullet and revise its plans? Else, travel by car and airplanes will go on booming causing much harm by way of Climate change, diversion of land, air pollution in cities and congestion on the roads.

NEITHER palpable increase in average speed will be there, NOR considerable savings in Travel Time

The so called increase in speed on the Golden Quadrilateral & the Diagonals will most likely be in patches with long stretches with lower speed of 100-140 kmph. Shouldn’t expect reduction of more than 1 hr for journeys like Delhi-Mumbai & Delhi-Kolkata. It may take 5 to 10 yrs.

It shows about 15% of the routes are on bad formation. Some routes may require major realignments to ease curves.

To realize full speed potential of IR network, speed raising must be a top priority project on the whole IR & target speed should be 200 kmph as China did 1997-2007.