Railway Early Histoty & Developments

Early History and Developments

Creation of Indian Railways • 1950: Legislation passed to allow central govt. to take over railway companies in India. • 1951 (Apr 14): Southern Railway formed by merging Madras & Southern Mahratta Rly, South Indian Rly and Mysore State Rly. • 1951 (Nov 5): Central Railway formed by merging GIPR, Nizam State Rly and

Creation of Indian Railways • 1951 (Nov 5): Western Railway formed by merging BB&CIR, Saurashtra Rly, Jaipur State Rly and Cutch Rly. • 1952 (Apr 14): Northern Railway formed by merging Jodhpur Rly, Bikaner Rly, 3 divs of East Indian Rly and East Punjab Rly • 1952 (Apr 14): Eastern Railway formed by merging remaining EIR, Bengal Nagpur Rly, and Bengal Assam Rly

Creation of Indian Railways • 1952 (Apr 14): North Eastern Railway formed by merging Oudh Tirhut Rly, Assam Rly and Kanpur-Achnera section of BB&CIR. Thus 6 zones came into being upto 14 April 1952.

Creation of Indian Railways • 1955: SER carved out of ER • 1958: NFR carved out of NER • 1966: SCR carved out of CR & SR.

Key Statistics (2000-2001) • • • • • • •

Route Kms Number of Stations Passenger Kms Tonne Kms Employees Revenue Expenditure

: 63,028 : 6,853 : 457,022m : 312,371m : 1,545.3m :Rs. 348,805m :Rs. 346,673m Up-to 31.3.2001

First Trains • • • • • • • • •

England France United States Germany Russia Holland Italy Spain India

1825 1829 1830 1835 1837 1839 1839 1848 1853 (16 April)

Initial Reactions • Railways faced Prejudice, Opposition and Criticism in the early years. • Railways were considered unsafe as compared to coaches(horse drawn carriages) “Does anybody mean to say that decent people…would consent to be hurried along…upon a railroad, from which, had a lazy schoolboy left a marble, or a wicked one a stone, they would be pitched off their perilous track into the valley beneath;…”

Initial Reactions(contd.) • Queen Victoria made her first rail journey only in 1842, a full 17 years after the opening of the first railway line in England. Even this was looked upon with apprehension by her loyal subjects.

Initial Reactions(contd.) • In India, introduction of Railways was considered a ‘hazardous and dangerous’ venture a ‘premature and expensive undertaking’ “…the climate of the country would be a most serious obstacle. There was the fear of the disastrous effect of periodical rains, of violent winds and a vertical sun. The damage that would be caused by insects and vermin to the banks and the timber sleepers was dwelt on, as well as the effects of tropical vegetation, while a more reasonable and valid objection was raised in the difficulty which would be experienced in finding competent engineers and workmen for constructing and working railroads in India.”

Early Signals • The first train which left Darlington for Stockton did not have the benefit of signals. • In India also, the first train in 1853 ran without any signals.

Early Signals • Policemen in impressive uniforms moved around the station, changing the points at junctions and giving instructions to the drivers of trains by coloured flags by day and oil lamps by night. • Very soon, fixed signals on posts began to to be used. Different Companies used different shapes. • Initially, the signals consisted of only ‘main signals’ fitted in front of the station master’s office and an outer signal in each direction, without any interlocking between the facing points and signals.

Early Signals One type was the ‘Disc and Crossbar’ signal where a disc being visible gave the Proceed aspect and a rectangular crossbar being visible the stop aspect.

Crossbar indicates Stop

Disc indicates Proceed

Disc and Crossbar Signal

Early Signals • In 1841, a new design of signal, the semaphore was introduced and this soon became the standard. This early signal had an arm which is horizontal for the stop aspect, inclined downwards at 45o for the caution aspect and downwards 90o for the proceed aspect. • (Subsequently, the 450 aspect was made the proceed aspect and the 900 aspect was given up.)

Early developments • Later, the station yards were key interlocked, keys being transmitted by hand. • In 1904, electric key transmitters were invented by Major Hepper, Signal Engineer ex-NorthWestern Railway (India). Popularly called Hepper Key Transmitters, they have been extensively used on IR.

Early developments (contd) • The first railway (in India) to appoint a special officer as signal engineer was the ex-East Indian Railway, who appointed Mr. S.T. Dutton in 1889. The Great Indian Peninsula was the second railway, which appointed Mr. I.W. Stokes in 1903 and this was soon followed by other railways.

Early developments (contd) • The next important development was to control the points and signals from a central location at the station. Lever frames thus came into being. This grouping led to an even more important development. Levers were connected together in such a way that they were physically locked unless it was safe to pull them. This feature was known as interlocking and is the basis of all signalling today. • The ex-GIP Railway was the first railway to have installed cabin interlocking on a large scale on Bombay-Delhi route in 1912. • In UK. full comprehensive interlocking became a legal requirement by 1880s.

Early developments (contd) • Simultaneously, simple electrical communication between stations became possible and this led to the development of the Block System. This system, when used under a strict procedure, ensured that only one train can be on the track between two stations at any one time. This section of track (between stations) was known as the block and the system known as the Absolute Block System. • By the 1880s, Absolute Block system was also a compulsory legal requirement in UK. • The system was gradually refined and interlocking between the Block Instrument and the signals was also provided.

Early developments (contd) • Accidents still happened because signallers forgot where trains might be standing for long periods. A Rule (rule 55) was therefore made that if a train stopped at a signal for more than three minutes, either the guard or the fireman had to walk to the cabin to formally remind the signaller of the presence of the train. • We have a similar rule on IR. Rule 4.44 of GR prescribes a waiting period of 5 minutes.

Further developments • The next development was the Track Circuit that could detect, in a safe manner, that a section of track was not occupied by any rail vehicles. • Track circuits enabled introduction of automatic signals, worked solely by the operation of track circuits. • Automatic Signalling was introduced in Bombay area during 1928.

Further developments (contd) • The manual operation of points and signals imposed a limit on the distance up to which a cabin could control them. At large stations, a number of cabins were necessary. • Invention of electrical point machines and electrical signal machines removed this restriction. • In 1923, colour light signals were introduced for the first time. In 1926, standards were laid down for the meanings of the colours which are in use till today.

Further developments (contd) • Conventional Colour Light Signals use filament bulbs which have a life of 1000 Hrs. • LED Signals, using a cluster of LEDs, have been recently developed. They have much longer life and are practically maintenance free.

Longer Lasting Lights Light emitting diodes have been fitted to 25 ground position lights around Oxford station in a programme designed to reduce maintenance requirements. Traditional lights often have a short bulb life; trials with the LEDs, developed by Amey and Dorman Traffic Products, showed an 800% improvement in failure rates is possible. The new units cost £750 to replace, but the maintenance frequency improves from quarterly to annually, giving a three year cost recovery. Trials are currently underway at Reading for theatre lights and junction indicators using LEDs. Westinghouse Rail Systems has gained Railtrack approval for its new SL35 long life signal lamp. Standard lamps are replaced at approximately every 1,000hrs, however the long life lamp, promoted by Westinghouse as 'the next best solution to the LED signal', should last for 8,000hrs.

Modern Railways, December 2001, p 14

Further developments (contd) • Invention of electromechanical relays, along with the introduction of colour light signals and electric point machines enabled use of relay interlockings operated from Panels provided with push buttons and illuminated indications.

Further developments (contd) • To pass signalling information from track-side to a moving locomotive, Automatic Warning System was developed during the 1960s. It is now refined to provide Automatic Train Protection, where an onboard computer continuously calculates the maximum permissible speed and monitors & controls the actual speed of the train • The most significant development took place during mid 1980s. A microprocessor based Solid State Interlocking system was developed.

Further Trends • European Train Control System (ETCS): – For AWS and ATC, different manufacturers (in Europe) developed different designs, which were not compatible with one another. – To overcome this problem, specifications have been developed so that equipment of various manufacturers becomes compatible. This will give freedom to Railways to use equipment of any manufacturer.

Further Trends (Contd.) • Moving Block concept: – If Braking distance and an extra margin is available in front of a moving train, it can move safely. This gave rise to Moving Block concept. – For its working, information about condition of occupancy of track ahead of a train must reach the on-board computer of the train continuously on a real time basis.