Are the Locomotive wheels falling apart?
Thirty eight years after ‘he’ has left the department, and fifty three years after ‘it’ first landed in our shores and majestically moved around on our tracks, cloaked in blue and silver livery, causing the countryside to reverberate to the high frequencies that it would generate, they (he and it both) are still being talked about not by present railway men nor by ex- railway men, but by rank outsiders.
‘He’ is the redoubtable, Bamunuarachhige Don Rampala, the once upon a time charismatic General Manager of Railways whose life in the department was quite suddenly and unexpectedly cut off in mid 1970 by political expediency, and ‘it’ is the yet indestructible General Motors, M2 class locomotive of USA, bequeathed to the railways by Rampala through his skill, expertise and his unerring judgment in making the right selection. And the reference not unsurprisingly has been sparked off by the unique personality of the former and the strength, durability and the performance characteristics of the latter.
Rampala has left such an indelible impression among staff in the department, among train travelers and even among the general public that those who carry memories of that golden era under him, feel it necessary on the one hand and sufficient on the other, to make a comparison of the events of today with what would have gone on then, in order to draw parallels. Those who have heard about him would like to hear more about him. And so it was that the author of the article about the ill fated locomotives (the French locomotives) that appeared in a daily news paper about two months ago deemed it appropriate and not out of time or out of context to do so.
The said article revealed that the original decision/recommendation made somewhere in the nineties to purchase the General Motors locomotives, was reversed by ‘an invisible hand’ that later approved the purchase of French locomotives instead. What wisdom would have driven someone to this reversal? The railways is a highly specialized technical department where skilled engineers of every discipline who have learned their discipline and their skills through a lifetime of experience, are involved in planning for the department’s future, do participate in duties such as drafting specifications for all departmental purchases including locomotives and a host of other technical functions.
In tender evaluations, a government selected technical evaluation committee consisting of professional engineers take up each offer individually and evaluate it clause by clause as per specification, and offer comment on the suitability or otherwise of each of them on the basis of proven engineering principles. This recommendation of theirs is next vetted by the head of the department who as an engineer will offer his independent comments using his engineering background before it is submitted to the ministry for forward transmission to the government. In the ministry, a group of competent, very senior, independent public servants appointed by the cabinet will sit on deliberation in terms of laid down, time tested, public service rules and regulations where the technical evaluation committee will also be invited to seek clarification that may become necessary. That may be how the original recommendation for the selection of the General Motors locomotive had been sent up to the government. If all these ten to twelve gentlemen have colluded jointly and severally to mislead anyone with the wrong recommendation it must be the greatest daylight robbery ever committed by a set of responsible public servants. On the other hand, if as stated, an ‘invisible hand’ had reversed the selection to go for the French locomotives, the debacle that the department now faces in using them illustrates that selection of locomotives cannot be done by muppets like selecting cricketers for a test match.
As if the damage done to the country by this wrongful act was not enough, both the treasury secretary and the secretary transport who were members of the tender board, have called it quits when they realized that their work had been devalued. They were both at the zenith of long and distinguished careers, and would have wished to leave service more honourably, not in a huff the way circumstances forced them to. And the engineers who compiled the initial technical evaluation report were ridiculed in public by a VVIP, who came on TV to defend the flawed action, and went on to state on public view that the report was not worth two gram seeds.
The article further described that the higher cost of the unsuitable locomotive alone apparently was not the only loss that the department was made to suffer. It highlighted the fact that the locomotive is fitted with a large number of electronic components such as sensors, which control its performance. Electronic devices no doubt ensure good performance. But it was a fact well known among railway staff doing maintenance of locomotives over a long period of time that in Sri Lanka under tropical heat, humidity and ingress of dust, electronic components fail frequently, are pretty expensive to replace, and most of them being sealed units, cannot be repaired like other hardware items. To make things worse in this case, the remedy offered for the failed components seems worse than the failure itself. When a failure occurs, there are two alternative steps suggested by the supplier of the locomotive as a remedy: replacement of the defective electronic components with new ones at exceedingly high prices, or dispatch of the defective component to the works of the original equipment manufacturer for testing repairing and returning. Whoever agreed to such a proposition, had done so completely oblivious to the only viable procedure that had been previously followed by the department in such cases which is of firstly settling for components that are suited to local conditions of humidity and ingress of dust, and secondly holding spares that are needed to repair the units and doing the repairs locally in the workshops.
The French locomotive seems a very sophisticated new design. That would surely meet the exacting demands of the western countries which adopt modern and completely different methods, procedures and techniques of maintenance unique to them. It is also likely that companies that make these electronic components are close at hand, serving as vendors, ready to handle repairs with no time losses between removing and refitting. Western railways would not be tied down by red tape for placing such orders, for making payment for such quick fixes etc like a government department in a developing country where rigid financial and administrative rules apply. The locomotive therefore is ‘one out of this world’ (at least in the developing world) in relation to methods and practices prevailing in our railway system for their in-service maintenance and, consequently, cannot meet daily service requirements. On this alone, the locomotive should not have been approved.
How else will the department be adversely affected by the wrongful selection of this locomotive? The price difference alone would have been a tidy sum. The impracticable repair procedure suggested uniquely in this instance delay the repairs unduly adding to the pile-up of locomotives awaiting repairs with resultant cancellations. It leads to over utilizing the good locomotives in use to work extra duty turns in order to maintain services. This would give rise to premature failure of such locomotives as well due to their maintenance schedule being delayed in this manner. This problem is therefore likely to live as long as the locomotives last, pushing the losses forward like a recurring decimal – the limits of losses getting bigger as time goes on. It also has the hidden unsavory factor of a third world country without sufficient balance of payments surpluses to buy onions and potatoes for the people, being flush enough to pay for the labour of a first world country for repairing these components and that too at a time when even their work is being increasingly outsourced in order to cut down on their costs.
Caught between these two equally untenable alternatives of buying new components or getting them repaired overseas, there would have been a third possibility that existed had Rampala or someone nearly as good was available at the helm today. Rampala didn’t walk into the General Manager’s chair through the back door. He climbed step by difficult step through the only rugged way that was open to him to reach the top. Rampala was an engineer par excellence. He was not a mere ‘pothe gura’. He translated what he knew into the practice of his profession. He was an innovator. He began to hone his skills early in his career in his apprentice days, walking from shop to shop, familiarizing himself with the activity in each shop, with the staff right down to the supervisor and the skilled workman; so much so that as he began his rise he had no difficulty in picking the best men and the best venue for solving the untold problems that one would come across in running a train safely, speedily and with comfort for the passengers. When necessary, he had no difficulty in getting to the nuts and bolts of any failure if he happened to be at site. He was the practical man in every sense of the word.
Tales about Rampala abound to establish the fact that as General Manager he was equal to a situation such as this. These two anecdotes will provide interesting reading if not an insight into the realm of that possibility.
A. R. P. Wijeskera, an engineer who worked closely with Rampala in Ratmalana was on a test run on an M1 diesel electric locomotive to Galle. They had completed the first leg of the run, gone for their lunch and returned to the Galle railway station to commence the return journey attached to a passenger train. He says in the “Rampala Felicitation Volume published by the Institution of Engineers Sri Lanka in his memory, “Rampala has innovated some modifications to correct the control circuits of the locomotive. A service engineer from the UK was accompanying us to observe, first hand, the results achieved with the modifications. We returned to disaster. A battery contact had stuck when the driver shut down the locomotive at Galle. The short circuit had heated the control wires and the plastic covering had fused. Rampala was not flustered. He called for a knife and plenty of coir rope! In a while the engine was ready for the return journey after he held the wires apart with coir rope. The British engineer who had been flown down to recommend modifications watched in amazement as Rampala ordered that locomotive to be put on the passenger train. He was horrified but respectful of Rampala ever since”
On another occasion, it was the diesel hydraulic locomotives. The engineer working for him was Mudalige. In Mudalige’s words: “A transmission defect arose on a diesel hydraulic locomotives that had just been put into service. A modification has been carried out by the experts specially flown down from the manufacturers but they were unable to put it right. Rampala could not afford to wait long as the service was getting affected. So he himself did a very simple modification with minimum cost which proved successful and the locomotives were put back to service. The experts, shocked into disbelief, began to call him ‘Mr. Railway’. He was the classic trouble shooter, would not leave anything to be sorted out by his subordinates. He took it as his prime responsibility as the head of the department to ensure a trouble free train service.
Rampala had a vision for the department, apart from his dedication to the job and innate ability as an engineer. Early into his tenure at the helm, he sought and obtained approval for a corporate plan for the department. He realized that just purchasing locomotives and carriages which would have been his priority as a mechanical engineer was not a panacea for all the ills of the department. The plan he conceived covered every aspect of running a speedier, more comfortable service for the long distance travelers, and a speedier, more frequent service with more traveling space in coaches for the ever expanding commuter service.
The corporate plan that Rampala envisaged had all the above sub departments involved.. These were way and works, signaling and the operations departments, all of which are jointly responsible for providing a fast, safe and more frequent train service. The important steps he took were increasing track speeds from 35/40 mph to 55/60 mph, which involved upgrading the track structure, with heavier rail sections, with a larger density of sleepers, replacement of old wrought iron bridges with steel bridges with higher yield strength, strengthening other weak bridges to carry higher axle loads, use of improved track fastenings, laying faster turnouts through station yards, and easing off some of the sharp curves along the track; introduction of ‘power sets’ with larger capacity coaches, faster acceleration and braking capabilities, and much more standing accommodation to meet the expanding commuter traffic in the suburban services ; improved signaling facilities viz automatic and centralized train control in place of the former lock and block system of signaling in the suburban area to enable the increasing number of commuter trains to b e handled every three to five minutes, and fast named expresses to the terminal destinations in all directions cutting short the travel time considerably
In pursuing this plan, he saw to the implementation of all the different aspects of the plan simultaneously. Funds were sought and obtained for the corporate program to be implemented progressively without compromising one for the other. He was careful not to keep purchasing locomotives costing large sums of foreign exchange at the expense of requirements in the other areas. By this corporate approach to implementing the program he was able to achieve significant improvement in the services and an enhanced image of the department that kept the traveling public happy and contented. As an engineer he spoke the same language as the others involved in this plan that greatly facilitated implementation.
And then he sat, not behind an ivory tower to rest on his laurels, as most departmental heads used to do and perhaps may be doing even today, but in the railway control office every morning and evening when the train service is heaviest doing the harder task of testing his own devices and his men at work, looking for offenders, if any. It mattered not if such offences were intentional, accidental, habitual, or caused by plain stupidity. What mattered to him was that trains were not delayed as a consequence of a human error. He was a satisfied man if the service ended without incident or delay. Anyone found guilty of delaying a train would incur his wrath. And there was no doubt of what was said at the time: that every railway employee, be it a driver getting into the cab of his locomotive in the Badulla running shed or one taking on his duty turn at Dematagoda, had that fear in him that ‘this man Rampala may be already looking over my shoulder to see what I am doing and might tap me on the shoulder any minute.’ Nobody would cause even a minute’s delay that he wouldn’t be able to explain.
Whilst steadfastly pushing ahead the plan for improvements, he did not lose sight of the fact that the workshop at Ramalana, his happy hunting ground for a lifetime in the CGR, should work as the king pin of the entire operation of the department and serve the requirements of the train service. He saw to it that every wheel in every machine in every shop at Ratmalana was ‘well oiled and working smoothly’. In the years of the sixties there was no pampering of the staff with incentive payments and other perks to pep them up.
This repair work at Ratmalana and shops in Colombo was very carefully monitored on a weekly basis at a meeting that Rampala used to chair. At these meetings he wouldn’t take `no’ for an answer for any delays. He would also visit the various repair shops on a regular basis and keep himself well informed of the state of work in each place. He was an exceptionally gifted person when it came to putting his finger right in the center of a trouble spot and providing a solution. He would push everyone to get more than the output required from the different shops to run the daily train service as he had planned. With his input he was able to ensure a steady output from the repair shops as required by him.
The results he saw for himself before he left the department spoke for the success he was able to achieve. As found in the railway administration reports for the year 1968/69, the last year Rampala was in service, the department provided an average of 450 trains daily, with a fleet of 91 diesel locomotives and 883 coaches.. It is clear that the present administration is far short in the service being provided to the public, compared to the service 40 years ago.
What of now? The table published in the article referred to, showed the average daily number of locomotives of each type available for service as against the original number imported. The shortfall in the number lying in repair shops would, according to the table, be 84 – 50 = 34 locomotives. The time table requirement is 60.The number of trains run per day according to the timetable which is a public document is 280. However since only 50 locomotives are available for use, the number of trains run per day would be around 270 unless some locomotives are over utilized much to their detriment since their scheduled maintenance would have been sacrificed.
One doesn’t need rocket science to realize that these 34 locomotives could be pushed out from the repair shops to perform functions that a new locomotive could do. This is the fact that the article seems to have attempted to emphasize. . The minister evidently has been advised that the department was short of 15 locomotives. But the department is now running nearly 200 trains a day less than 40 years ago, with nearly the same number of locomotives and coaches as then. The shortfall in the output from repair shops between then and now is staggering although from then to now the same repair shops received hundreds of millions of rupees worth of new equipment in recent times in order to improve their efficiency. Further present day recruits are well trained in a technical training institute before they were taken in, as opposed to much lower quality recruitment of 40 years ago. When the department requested additional locomotives from government, was the minister given the correct position and the correct brief?
The minister is very enthusiastic, well meaning, committed to providing the best possible service to his constituency that brought him to power. He looked very passionate when he appeared on TV and made the case for purchase of new locomotives on the grounds that there was ‘nothing available’. I have watched him addressing public meetings on TV and the passion he displayed and saw the feelings he expressed towards the traveling public undergoing hardship due to train delays and cancellations. He explained how he had to go to the treasury to obtain a loan for the purchase of the locomotives.
Despite all the adverse factors opposing the purchase of new locomotives, say it is decided to proceed with the purchase of the 15 new locomotives. Will not the self same problem about non availability of spares for those locomotives make them join with the French, the German, the Japanese, the British et al to stand sentinel in the various repair shops and thereby run short of siding space? That may lead to perhaps providing extra siding facilities which if not followed up would result in delay to and cancellation of trains. Would then a fresh order for a new set of locomotives be placed as the only answer?
And what about a corporate plan? Is there at least a corporate approach now for solving the numerous problems of the railway? Is it purchasing new locomotives et al to be the only tangible solution for all the ills of the department? What of the track, signaling, bridges, equipment at stations? Aren’t there shortcomings in those areas which if remedied could bring about an improvement in the train services? Take for instance journey times of long distance trains.
There appears to be a large number of speed restrictions imposed along the track on every branch line in every direction in the railway network. The total number of speed restrictions is well over a thousand. This is a staggering statistic. It averages to one speed restriction per kilometer about a ¼ kilometer in length and with a restricted speed of 5kmph to 15kmph. This situation will contribute to a delay of around one hour on a journey say from Colombo to Matara. Here again, the journey times would be one hour more that what it was 40 years ago! At present; the following speed restrictions that have remained in place along the track from Colombo to Matara on the coast line. The speed restrictions imposed on every other line in the network undoubtedly would be the same proportion as the one below:
No. of mileages Restricted speed kmph
For weak sleepers 75 10 to 15
For weak rails 20 5 to 15
For whatever reason, an important aspect which has a direct bearing on the department’s efforts to run an efficient train service seems to have been lost in the horizon. As for sleepers I am sure we are no more depending on timber sleepers and their import. In the early nineties the department got a state- of-the-art plant to produce concrete sleepers, complete with all the trappings, to manufacture ‘in house’ the complete requirement of pre-stressed concrete sleepers to a well-tried and well tested international design. It was geared to do three shifts as the occasion demanded, and for the first few years it did run three shifts and is capable of producing almost 1,000 sleepers a day. Recent rehabilitation programs for the track brought in the required machinery to lay these sleepers speedily and with least human effort since they are too heavy to be handled by men. One cannot find a good enough reason why the department would not use sleepers that could be made by them within the department, lay them on the track and remove the large number of speed restrictions that are causing a debilitating effect on running long distance trains without delay.
As for rails the problem may be funds. I am sure that the minister, if informed of the serious situation about the lack of rails, will use the same passion and obtain the necessary funds to purchase the rails so that the speed restrictions imposed for weak rails could also be removed. Simultaneously if repairs to the locomotives already lying in repair shops are more vigorously pursued and added to the running fleet of locomotives, that would enable far more improvement to be brought about in the train services than the proposed purchase of new locomotives.
It is seen from the foregoing that the facts as stated in the said article are true. Have the priorities been mixed up? With the funds being used to purchase a further lot of locomotives, it appears that much work which needs to be done in other areas requiring less money. Doing so would produce quicker results in providing a better train service long before the new locomotives would arrive even if they are ordered.
(The writer is a former General Manager of Railways)
by D. C. Lelwela, C. Eng
Source: The Island
Tags: department, engineers, implementation, locomotive, Manager, plan, ratmalana, service, track, workman
October 26th, 2008 at 11:30 am
First of all, Mr Lelwela, a former GMR, is to be congratulated on this excellent article. Having had the good fortune to serve under that great railwayman, Br B D Rampala, Mr Lelwela has experienced first hand, the running of the railway during its “golden era” and is well placed to comment on the current ills.
The CGR has been besotted for years with the problem of finding the best type of locomotive for local conditions, whenever new purchases come up. The local conditions sch as 1 in 44 ruling gradients on the up-country line, 20 chain reverse curves, altitudes of over 6,000 feet coupled with the poor quality track and heat, humidity and dust pose severely adverse conditions on any locomotive. As every one knows, the GM M2s have performed admirably for over 50 years and continue to do so. This is a tribute to GM, as several of their early hood units like the GPs and G12s (our M2s are G12 units) continue to provide yeoman service all over the world from America to Australia even after 50 odd years. Unfortunately, GM no longer manuacture locomotives, they sold their locomotive concern, Electro Motive Division, a couple of years ago. However, Electro Motive Diesels (EMD) as they are now called, continue to manufacture locos, although they have nothing to do with GM now.
Again, the M6s and M7s which are equipped with GM EMD engines, have been running for over 25 years without problem. The Alco locos too (M4 and now the Indian M8s) are sturdy performers, but the long and heavy M4s had displaced track on the up-country line and I believe the M8s too due to their weight and bogie wheel base are not allowed up-country, although their power of 2,400 is more than sufficient for the heaviest train.
All these locos have one thing in common, slow running diesel engines of around 900 rpm. All the high speed engines such as the M5s, W1s and W2s are no longer around, after comparatively short periods. Slow running engines are essential for durability.
Actually the Alstom M9s are wonderful machines, but totally unsuited for Sri Lankan conditions. Their AC drive and sophisticated electronic controls make them suitable for places where excellent maintenace facilities and ready part availability are present, as Mr Lelwela points out. Undoubtedly AC drive is superior to the old DC drive, but controls are far more complex. In fact, for this very reason, the Norfolk Southern railway in US chose to stick with DC drive only.
Coupled with all these complications, when there is pressure from various sources for furthering their own interests, it is inevitable that disaster is the end result with millions in scarce foreign exchange lost. I wonder what the outcome of the recent tender for new locos was. Can some knowledgeable person enlighten me?
I am not sure if the country can afford to spend millions on expensive locos as those offered by EMD (former GM). No doubt they would be far superior to others. But EMD too now equip their locos with microprocessor contol as standard, such as in electronic fuel injection, slip control, etc. Spares and exacting maintenace would still be required. On the othr hand the Indian M8s are to an old Alco design, unsophisticated and smple. After all, India has hundreds of these WDM Alcos in various configurations, running on their systems. Could they not offer a cheaper and simple and reliable solution to our locomotive dilemma? I think it is worthwhile pursuing.