Course Code - CIVE1257 Railway Assignment Report

This assignment is based on the railway infrastructure of New Delhi. The assignment will provide a general characterization of New Delhi, such as its population, total area, and its topographic characteristics. Furthermore, the assignment will also cover information about the current railway infrastructure system of New Delhi based on real-time facts and statistics, as well as the previous state of operation and any future policies, which have been declared to be implemented. These stats and data will be used to compare New Delhi’s railway transportation system to other transportation systems operating in the city. Additionally, the assignment will provide a description of the physical and mechanical characteristics of the trains, which are currently circulating on the network of New Delhi. In addition, the assignment will be used to provide details about the railway track, and its components. By focusing on the superstructure, and its relationship with geo-mechanicalpropertiesof the subgrade. Based on the research and analysis conducted, suitable recommendations will be provided along with a conclusive statement.

New Delhi, the capital of India, is an Urban district located in the city of Delhi. The total square capital Area of New Delhi is around 42.7 km, which is approximately 16.5 mile, andthe total elevation of the city is 216m, which is approximately 709 ft. As for the city’s population, the total people residing in the Delhi is around 26,455,000, with approximately 257,803 people living in the Capital City, and another 142,000 of the population residing within the district. The density of New Delhi is 6000 per square Km or 16000 per square mile, which is very large as compared to other cities. The density of the city indicates, that most of the time, the city remains crowded owing to the congested lifestyle of the people. The elevation across the city is due to its location. New Delhi lies on the Indo-Gangetic Plain, which adds to the diversified elevation across the city. Delhi’s topographic characteristic is divided into three parts, which are the Plains, the Yamuna flood plain, and the ridge (Nayak,2018). The altitude around the Yamuna plains is low, which allows good opportunity for agricultural works, owing to the fertility of the soil due to high alluvium content. The highest altitude of the city owes to the Ridge, which is as high as 1043 ft above the sea level. There are three channels, which crosses the Ridge namely- the Yamuna Canal, the Agra Canal, and the Hindou Canal (Chawla,2018). Topographically, New Delhi resides at a middle section of the three segments with a moderate altitude above the sea level.

New Delhi’s Railway system comprises of two networks- New Delhi Railway station, and New Delhi Metro station. The New Delhi metro station is considered as the busiest railway station in the country, and is situated between Ajmeri Gate and Paharganj. The railway station of New Delhi is currently holding the record for the largest interlocking system route in the world. The New Delhi railway station has 16 platforms with 18 tracks, which handles around 500,000 passengers along with network system for 400 trains each day. According to the revenue estimate, the railway station of New Delhi is ranked top as the most earning railway station in terms of revenue collected from passengers (Prabhune,2018).

In the past, the Old Delhi Railway station used to operate instead of the New Delhi railway station across the whole city. During 1910s, the railways station used to operate along the Agra-Delhi railway line, which is currently knows as Lutyens’ Delhi. After that, the network line was relocated along the Yamuna river in 1924 during the construction of the new capital. The two rail bridges, who were used during this shifting were Minto and Hardinge, who are now known as Shivaji and Tilak. At that time, the old Delhi railways station was controlled by the East Indian Railways Company. In 1926, the East Indian Railway Company initiated the construction of the New railway station. At the initial stage, the total infrastructure of the new railway station was one platform and one single-story building. The platform was built between Ajmeri Gate and Paharganj. Later, that station came to be known as the New Delhi railway station. The government planned to initiate the construction of the railway station inside the Central Park of Connaught Place. However, due to lack of Aesthetics, that plan was cancelled.

The New Delhi railway station has experienced modernization since 2007, when the government handed the tender to Farrells to modernize and expand the railway station on account of the commonwealth games, which was organized in 2010 (Narayanaswami,2018). Since that time, Farrells had overseen the whole renovation of the new Delhi railway station, and had been implicating necessary projects to modernize the rail station, so that it could keep up with the evolving technology in the country, as well as the whole World. The government instructed the Farrells to initiate the first phase by the time of the commonwealth games. The first phase was conducted to provide different station, as well as property development both in and around the station. The entire cost for the renovation process was estimated to be around 60 billion, which is equivalent of US $ 841.2 million. For the project, 13 consortiums placed their bid for getting the contract. There was a proposal to equip New Delhi railway station with high-tech lighting in 2008. However, the proposal was initiated in 2014. Currently, the New Delhi railway station occupies 86 high tech lighting facilities. Around 10-20 % of them can be used for retail and commercial purposes. The new building on the side of the Ajmeri Gate was introduced by the Northern Railway. The tender for the project was given to Gangotri Enterprise Limited at a bid cost of Rs 250,000,00. The total area of the new building is around 9000 Square meters, and the building is three-story. In 2016, a Gwalior based company, known as Vivaan Solar took the project to build rooftop solar panels with a capacity of 1.1 Mega Watt. That project is still under the future policies and project category, as the project has not been fully initiated. However, once completed, the company has been given the task of maintaining the project’s quality for twenty-five years. The solar panels were completely built by the company in 2017. In 2013, a tender was given to a Mumbai-based company for installing free Wi-Fi within the vicinity of the railway station. The total cost of the project was around 8 million, which is equivalent to US $ 110,000. The project was successfully completed in 2014, which is still operational.

The New Delhi railway station is the central hub for two most important passenger train series in India namely- the Shatabdi Express and the Rajdhani Express.

The Shatabdi Express series are one of fastest moving passenger trains, which are operating to and from New Delhi. There are three classes within the express trains i.e., Anubhuti Class, Executive Class, and AC Chair Car. There is no seeping arrangement provided in the trains. Generally, all the Shatabdi Express trains run at a maximum speed of 120 km per hour. However, the Bhopal Shatabdi Expresshas a peak speed of about 155 km per hour. The locomotives used in the Shatabdi Express are generally WAP-7 or WAP-5 type (Srivastava,2019).

 

Like the Shatabdi Express, the Rajdhani Expressis the one of two most prestigious and fast-moving express trains of Indian Railway network.Like the Shatabdi Express, the Rajdhani Expresshas three classes known as First Class AC, AC 2-tier, and AC 3-tier. The trains have both sleeping arrangement as well as seating arrangement. The maximum operating speed of Rajdhani Express is between 130 to 140 km per hour, while the average speed is around 81 to 87 km per hour. The average weight of a Rajdhani Express train is about 1100 tones. Like the Shatabdi Express, the locomotives used in the Rajdhani Express are of WAP-7 or WAP-5 type (Sundaram,2018).

The WAP-7 is the most powerful locomotive in the Indian Railways’ fleet. It is a class 7 three-phase AC electric passenger locomotive, and is the passenger variant of the WAG-9 freight locomotive. The WAP-7 locomotive can pull or dragging twenty-four coach trains at a speed between 110 to 140 km per hour (68 to 87) km per hour. The WAP-7 locomotive has a wheel diameter of 1092 (43 inches) mm when in new condition, and a diameter of 1016 mm (40 inches), when worn out. Its wheelbase is 15700 mm (51 feet 6 inches).  The length of a WAP-7 locomotive around 20562 mm (51 feet 6 inches), and its width is 3152 mm (10 feet 4 inches). The average height of the locomotive is around 4255 mm (13 feet 11 inches). The average weight of a WAP-7 loco is around 123 tones. The required power supply of the Locomotive is a three-phase supply with a maximum load of 2180 Voltage operating at 50 Hertz. The type of braking system used in the WAP-7 locomotive is Air and Regenerative (John,2018). The maximum power output of the WAP-7 locomotive at continuous condition is around 6122 Horse Power.

The WAP-5 type Locomotive considered as one of the fastest Locomotive owned by the Indian Railway. Around 10 of these locomotives were brought from Switzerland in 1995. The wheel diameter of the WAP-5 locomotive is 1092 mm when in new condition, 1054 mm when in half-worn condition, and 1016 mm when fully worn-out. Its wheelbase is 13000 mm (42 feet 8 inches). The length of a WAP-5 locomotive is around 18162 mm (59 feet 7 inch), the width is 3142 mm (10 feet 3 inches), and the height of the locomotive is around 4237 mm (13 feet 11 inches). The axle load of the WAP-5 is 19.5 tones while the total average weight of the loco is 78 tones. The electric system used by the locomotive is a 25 kV AC overhead supply operating at 50 hertz. The type of brakes used in the WAP-5 locomotive is Air and Regenerative (Sundaram,2018). The power output of a WAP-5 locomotive is around 5440 Horse power, while the more upgraded version WAP-5H locomotive produces a power output of around 6120 Horse Power at continuous running condition (Sharma,2017).

There are several components of a railroad or railway track namely- the Rails, the Railroad tiles, the fasteners, the railway gauges, the slab track, and the underlying subgrade.

Railway Gauges: In India, there are a total of four railway gauges, which are Broad Gauge, Meter Gauge, Narrow Gauge, and Standard Gauge. The Standard Gauge is used by almost 60% of the Indian Railways.

Broad Gauge: The Broad-Gauge, or the wide gauge gets its name from the wide distance between the two tracks. The total gauge length between the two-railway track in this case is 1676 mm (5 ft 6 inches), and provides the largest track-width of all the gauge types. The Broad-gauge track is being used in India since 1853. The Broad-Gauge tracks provides better stability than a normal and thinner gauge (Jharia,2016).

Standard Gauge: This type of gauge is mostly used in metro railways networks, monorail, and trams. The gauge length of the Standard gauge is between that of a Broad gauge and a Meter gauge, with a width of 1435 mm (4 ft 8 inches). Now-a-days, the Standard gauge is not used in many railway networks apart from Delhi metro, Bangalore metro, Mumbai metro, and Rapid metro rail Gurgaon.

Meter Gauge: The Meter gauge offers the second narrowest track-width after the Narrow gauge. The distance between the tracks in the case of meter gauge is 1000 mm (3 ft 3 inches). The objective of using meter gauge was to minimize the cost from the Broad gauge and the standard gauge (Srivastava,2019). However, due to its unavailability in many places, the government has initiated a project called Project Unigauge, which will convert the Meter gauge used in India into Broad gauge.

Narrow Gauge: The Narrow gauge provides the smallest track-width of all the gauges with a track-distance of 762 mm (2 ft 6 inches) and 610 mm (2 ft). However, in 2015, a 1500 mm Narrow gauge was invented which is used by only 2 % of the Indian railway network (Ranjan,2016).

There are various factors, that affects the choice of a railway gauge such as: -

• Poor areas Development- There are many poor areas in Indian where Narrow gauges are used to improve the area by connecting it to the rest of the country at a low cost. Thus, in this case, the narrow gauge is most suitable out of all the gauges.
• Traffic conditions- Traffic intensity plays a big role on the selection of the proper gauge. If the intensity of traffic over the railway track is high, then the most suitable gauge used will be Broad gauge. Thus, railway junctions, such as Howrah, Delhi, Mumbai, and other largely populated areas will require to have Broad gauge installed.
• Cost of track- The cost behind building a railway track is directly related to the type of gauge used. Broad gauges require more funds whereas narrow gauges require the least amount of money (Joshi,2020).
• Speed of the train- The type of gauge width used is directly proportional to the speed of the circulation trains. Since, the wheel’s diameter is 0.75 X the width of the gauge, it is imperative to use Broad gauge in places where high speed trains circulate.

Regarding the construction of railway tracks in an area, sub grade is considered as the materialistic base present underneath the railway tracks. it can also be referred to as formation level or the material required to build an embankment. A sub grade acts as the building foundation for a railway track. the loads constantly being applied whenever a train is passing gets transferred via deflection of rails to the ballast bed. from the ballast bed it gets transferred through the sub grade to the subsoil. the subsoil must be firm enough to hold the ballasts in it position of a long range of time without any irregular or unwanted deflection due to load. the soil must be comprised of hard particles in order to take the full on load and absorb the shock without hampering the rail's properties.  The sub soil that is not capable of taking on much load can cause devastating effects. The major key factors responsible for the success of a railway system is a proper water drainage capability and adequate dimensioning of its load bearing capacity.

Regarding a muddy sub grade, it would affect the entire system and it would be required to replace almost all of its components.  A poor sub grade quality requires more maintenance as well it decreases the usefulness of the railway tracks.

This assignment or report provides a detailed discussion regarding the influence of the dynamic as well as the geometrical soil parameters on basis of the propagation of the ground vibrations that has been induced by the loads on it. The regarded approach to this point is based entirely on a  three-dimensional model by giving more importance to  the  sources that produce realistic excitements such as  impulse loads on the track from the movement of railway vehicles. Regarding this aspect, or the latter, a complete vehicle or track model is to be developed (Thakur,2018). The simulation has been performed on time domain that offers an important approach when compared with the classic analysis of cycles. The ground initially prepared as an elastic homogeneous half-space with the addition of layered half-space. at the starting, the effects of homogeneous soil properties on the ground vibration is to be analyzed. After that, the second step is the Soil stratification process by using different  configurations. detailed analysis displays the fact that when receiver distance enhances the ground wave reflection in a layered ground as it plays a very crucial role in terms of reducing the motion of the ground surface. This effect gets enhanced as the phase velocity wavelength enlarges as  compared with the depth of surface layer.

 A 3D couples train-track soil interaction model has been under development which is based on the multi-body simulation (MBS) principle and Finite element Modeling(FEM) theories by using LS-DYNA. The prepared model can determine the high velocity effects of the train  on the track and the foundation. regarding this, the soil is taken in saturated form. the wheel-rail dynamic interactions below the track irregularity has been developed on basis of Hertz contact Theory.

The most fundamental part of the infrastructure of railway and its components is the rail track that can be categorized in to two main parts- substructure and superstructure. The initial parts of the tracks are the rails, rail pads, fastening system and concrete sleepers, which are known as the superstructure, whereas the substructure is in association with the system of geo technique which consists of ballast, sub-ballast and sub-grade (Bogart,2019). Mutual importance is gained by both substructure and superstructure in order to ensure the safety of the passengers as well as their comfort and quality in the ride.

Rails- For guiding the rolling stock, members of longitudinal steel called Rails are placed over the spaced sleepers. For maintaining a shape that is steady, and configuration of the smooth track, there must be sufficiency in strength as well as stiffness, which will help in resisting exertion of several forces by the travelling rolling stock (Pereira,2018). The basic function among all is the transfer and accommodation regarding the loads of wheel or axle over the supported sleepers. According to a study, signals are also conveyed by a rail track which is modern  and its actions are also witnessed of being a conductor over the electrified line. The rail with the flat bottom is the profile that is used mostly in common and it is also known as Vignole rail. It is classified in three parts mainly-

Railhead: the wheel tire is contacted by the top surface.

Rail web: the part in the middle that helps in supporting the railhead as columns.

Rail foot: the bottom part that helps in distributing the load from the web to the components of the superstructure that is underlying.

Rail pads- Rail pads are placed over the seat of the rail for filtering and transferring the forces which are dynamic from fasteners as well as rails to the sleepers.  Rail pads consisting value of high dashpot reduce high frequency forces that are in excess. The resiliency is also provided by the rail pads in between sleeper and rail, which helps in alleviating cracking of the rail seat and attrition of contact (Mohanta,2018).

Fastening systems-, Each and every component is included in the fastening system that helps in connecting the rail to the sleeper. The rail gauge is clamped by the fastening systems within tolerance that is acceptable and then forces are absorbed by it from the rails, which are then transferred to the sleepers (Sharma,2018). The fastening systems decelerate and damp the impact and vibration regarding several forces such as natural hazards and traffic. Sometimes the fastening systems also act as insulation that is electrical between the sleepers and the rail.

Sleepers- The transverse beams that rest on support or the ballast are referred to as sleepers. Sleepers made of wood were used in the paste as the availability of timber was in abundance around the local areas. However, adoption of reinforced sleepers that are concrete has been made in the modern rail tracks in the past 10 years due to their durable and long service life (Varma,2018).     

The infrastructure currently set up by Indian railways is considered to be one of the largest networks all over the world which is still working under one management. It helps in the traveling of millions of users and transportation of many metric tonnes of freight. Our current railway system is best suited for long range traveling and transport of bulk equipment all over India. It is also a very economic and safe mode of transport and helps in saving a lot of energy and time. For a long time, Indian railways is the choice of transport for the transfer of automobiles throughout the whole country. The rate of growth in this sector is almost 10 - 15 percent per year. The India government has recently begun to provide some policies that are investor friendly. This in turn brings in new investors that are connecting with the Indian railway and helping the Indian government improve the current rail infrastructure by focusing on investments. Shortly after that, the government of India moved to start the FDI or the Foreign Direct Investment policy in India with primarily one focus in mind (Vakharia,2018). That is to improve the rail network for both the freight trains, the high speed trains and for every single local trains too.

At the current time, there are many companies both in the foreign and the domestic sector that are interested in investing to the Indian railways. Some of the major investments like during the year 2019, a small pilot project was launched that was to find out the practical use case scenario of starting parcel service in the railway coaches and also for the current players in the e tail market. In the same year, they also entered in a joint venture with the MELPL or the Madhepura Electric Locomotives company in order to create almost 800 parts of the locomotive engine for their freight train service and also for its maintenance. That particular deal was with the French based company called Alstom and the deal was called the Agreement of Procurement and Maintenance. They also started their fast ticketing counter called One Touch ATVM. This service was starts initially in more than 40 suburb stations all over India. A specific section of the Uttar Pradesh east corridor was introduced in October 2^nd. It was known as KhurjaBandhan section. In July, the largest tunnel which was completely electrified got opened from Rapuru to Cherlopalli. Also, a number of bio safe toilets was set up in many long range trains. They also started a scheme using which they can get confirmed seats in some other train if their specific train gets filled up or for the waiting list passengers. In the year 2018, The PM of India set up the founding stone for the metro services in Pune sector. From 2019, food packets can be got just by scanning QR codes in a specific railway station and also get live kitchen feed of the stations. In the Delhi Mumbai and the Delhi Howrah routes, average speed was increased.

 

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