Railways Review Report

Looking forward to drive further mechanization in track maintenance, IR has acquired set of five track maintenance machines from Plasser &Theurer India. The new machines will be added to the existing fleet of 883 track machines of IR. The new set of machines will be deployed in varied Indian zonal railways.

The new set of machines acquired includes, three new 09- 3X- Dynamic Tamping Express machines, one, RM 80-92-U ballast cleaning machine and one Unimat- 4S points and crossing tamping machine. The new 09- 3X- Dynamic Tamping Express costing close to Rs 27 crores each is the latest high output integrated tamping machine having multiple functions , so far being carrier by different machines. It can measure pre and post trak geometry, correct the track to required geometry, can tamp three sleepers simultaneously. Further, it can stabilize and measure post tamping track parameters under load to ensure quality work done, thus eliminating the requirement of separate stabilization machine, reducing operating costs and track possession time. The machine will vibrate and compact the loose stone ballast under correction of track geometry. This will also eliminate manual measurement of track quality after maintenance. Four number of 09-3X have been recently inducted on IR and have been deployed on heavy density routes. According to the Railways Ministry, 42 more such machines have been planned to be inducted in Indian Railways over next three years.

The new machines delivered included new 09-3X-Dynamic Tamping Express (above) and RM 80-92-U (below) ballast cleaning machine among others

While the Unimat points and crossing tamping machines, costing about 20 crores, the latest generation tamping machine for track geometry correction of turnouts can tamp all the four rails in turnout. Presently, 32 numbers of Unimat-4S tamping machines are working on Indian Railways and sixty two more number of machines will be inducted in another three years.

Speaking during the machines handover ceremony, Indian Union Railway Minister, Mr. Piyush Goel said, “ The Indian Railways has planned for complete mechanization of inspection, monitoring relaying and maintenance of railway track to switch over to complete mechanized maintenance regime by 2020 on trunk route and by 2024 on the entire network of Indian Railways. For this, we propose to invest close to INR 13,000 crores in 2019-20 over 7 268 crores invested in 2018-19.” RR

Escorts Railway Product Division sales up by 35%

Escorts Railway Product Division sales in the quarter ended June 2018 correspondingly up by 35.0% at ` 88.1 crore as against ` 65.2 crore in quarter ended June 2017 and sequentially up by 15.9% against ` 76.02 crore in quarter ended March 2018. According to the company this quarter Escorts Railway Division has offered better product mix, higher spare sales, that resulted in EBIT margin correspondingly moving up by 1543 bps and sequentially up by 947 bps, now stood at 25.3% for quarter ended June 2018. Current order book as of 30th June 2018 is more than ` 300 crore and will be executed in the next 11-12 months. RR