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Someone`s honest: `I look at this every day...we killed him`: The Indian Express
Chennai, July 11: On his living room wall, M V Ramani has pasted The Indian Express report on the death of coach attendant Siva Ramakrishna who died for want of help in the Golconda Express accident last week. ``I look at the picture everyday and remind myself that together we have killed this man,`` says Ramani, General Manager of the Railways` Integral Coach Factory at Perambur in Chennai.
Chennai, July 11: On his living room wall, M V Ramani has pasted The Indian Express report on the death of coach attendant Siva Ramakrishna who died for want of help in the Golconda Express accident last week. ‘‘I look at the picture everyday and remind myself that together we have killed this man,’’ says Ramani, General Manager of the Railways’ Integral Coach Factory at Perambur in Chennai.
He has also made photocopies of the The Indian Express report on how Ramakrishna bled to death because the Accident Relief Train arrived three hours too late. ‘‘Something like this should never happen again.’’ He carries the photocopies with him to office everyday as he works on his plans to redesign railway coaches with emergency exits. A few of those photocopies are for the staff, the rest are for filing with safety reports.
All this is for a purpose: Ramani is working on an injury-proof, fire-proof coach, plans for which began four months ago, when Member (Mechanical) of the Railways called him up and said Railways Minister Nitish Kumar wanted ‘‘a Godhra-proof train.’’
‘‘No other specifications were given,’’ says Ramani. ‘‘So, now we have set about making an injury-free, centre buffer coupled, anti-roof climbing, fire-resistant doors, coach complete with escape hatches.’’
Ramani has been told that when his coach is ready Nitish himself will drop by and pour kerosene all over it and set it on fire. ‘‘This is a real test by fire. We have to literally destroy Rs 20 lakh of work to make sure Godhra never happens again. But when you set that against my annual budget of Rs 720 crore, it’s not a heavy price to pay.’’ He says the redesigned coach will be made as fire-proof as possible by sourcing the right materials for the walls, flooring, roofing, seating, curtains and upholstery, paints, electrical fittings and cables. These apart, there are plans to install a fire alarm system which gets activated when the temperature inside the cabin rises above 55 degrees Celsius.
That’s as far as fires go. As for safety, ICF’s special includes switching trains over to centre buffer coupling from the present screw coupling. ‘‘Screw coupling consists of a hook and a stirrup that can get dislocated on heavy impact, resulting in a coach pile-up. More than the impact, it’s the coach pile-up that kills. Just imagine, a coach weighs 44 tonnes. With the centre buffer coupling, pile-ups will be eliminated,’’ claims Ramani.
Problem two, he says, is the number of objects inside a coach that can cause injuries. The Railway has drawn up a list of 29, including flushing valves, foldable tables, fans, mirrors, toilet paper holders, soap trays and berth suspension straps. All 29 are going to be padded up, relocated, or removed completely. The next big problem is the design of the coach itself. ‘‘We found that during accidents the weak areas of a coach collapse first, which in the present ICF coaches is the first passenger bay (next to the doorway). In the earlier model, the doorway was strengthened to avoid corrosion. Now, we are going to make the doorway weaker and the passenger area stronger so when there is a crash, only the doorway and the toilets go.’’
While on the doors, in the new and improved coaches, they are going to be made of fibre reinforced plastic with an aluminum frame. This way, the doors will be destroyed on impact and if they don’t, it will be very easy to cut through them.
‘‘But in these new coaches, you don’t even have to wait for people to arrive and cut open the doors,’’ says Ramani. The ICF has planned for two escape hatches on the roof of each coach, which can be easily opened but only from the inside, and two on the floor of the coach, which can be opened from the outside. ‘‘They’ve been designed like that for safety reasons. You don’t want people entering from the roof or falling out of the bottom of the train.’’
Although every compartment is fitted with an escape window, the ICF has found that people either don’t know of their existence, or if they do, they haven’t a clue how to open it. Ramani says instructions and a fluorescent lining for the windows are in the making.
As for additional expenditure, Ramani says that the new coaches are likely to cost Rs 3.5 lakh extra. It now costs Rs 40 lakh to build a non-sleeper second class coach, a sleeper costs Rs 50 lakh, an AC chair car Rs 95 lakh and an AC sleeper car Rs 98 lakh to a crore.
‘‘Just adding the escape hatches and new doors will cost Rs 15,000 per coach,’’ says Ramani, adding that it can be easily done as all of the Indian Railways’ 35,000 coaches come up for overhauling every year.
A prototype of the redesigned coach should be ready by September-end, says Ramani. ‘‘So, hopefully, the 1,600 coaches we build in 2004 will have all these new safety features. With the Rs 17,000 crore the Central Government has sanctioned to the Railways, this should be no problem.’’
All this is for a purpose: Ramani is working on an injury-proof, fire-proof coach, plans for which began four months ago, when Member (Mechanical) of the Railways called him up and said Railways Minister Nitish Kumar wanted ‘‘a Godhra-proof train.’’
‘‘No other specifications were given,’’ says Ramani. ‘‘So, now we have set about making an injury-free, centre buffer coupled, anti-roof climbing, fire-resistant doors, coach complete with escape hatches.’’
Ramani has been told that when his coach is ready Nitish himself will drop by and pour kerosene all over it and set it on fire. ‘‘This is a real test by fire. We have to literally destroy Rs 20 lakh of work to make sure Godhra never happens again. But when you set that against my annual budget of Rs 720 crore, it’s not a heavy price to pay.’’ He says the redesigned coach will be made as fire-proof as possible by sourcing the right materials for the walls, flooring, roofing, seating, curtains and upholstery, paints, electrical fittings and cables. These apart, there are plans to install a fire alarm system which gets activated when the temperature inside the cabin rises above 55 degrees Celsius.
That’s as far as fires go. As for safety, ICF’s special includes switching trains over to centre buffer coupling from the present screw coupling. ‘‘Screw coupling consists of a hook and a stirrup that can get dislocated on heavy impact, resulting in a coach pile-up. More than the impact, it’s the coach pile-up that kills. Just imagine, a coach weighs 44 tonnes. With the centre buffer coupling, pile-ups will be eliminated,’’ claims Ramani.
Problem two, he says, is the number of objects inside a coach that can cause injuries. The Railway has drawn up a list of 29, including flushing valves, foldable tables, fans, mirrors, toilet paper holders, soap trays and berth suspension straps. All 29 are going to be padded up, relocated, or removed completely. The next big problem is the design of the coach itself. ‘‘We found that during accidents the weak areas of a coach collapse first, which in the present ICF coaches is the first passenger bay (next to the doorway). In the earlier model, the doorway was strengthened to avoid corrosion. Now, we are going to make the doorway weaker and the passenger area stronger so when there is a crash, only the doorway and the toilets go.’’
While on the doors, in the new and improved coaches, they are going to be made of fibre reinforced plastic with an aluminum frame. This way, the doors will be destroyed on impact and if they don’t, it will be very easy to cut through them.
‘‘But in these new coaches, you don’t even have to wait for people to arrive and cut open the doors,’’ says Ramani. The ICF has planned for two escape hatches on the roof of each coach, which can be easily opened but only from the inside, and two on the floor of the coach, which can be opened from the outside. ‘‘They’ve been designed like that for safety reasons. You don’t want people entering from the roof or falling out of the bottom of the train.’’
Although every compartment is fitted with an escape window, the ICF has found that people either don’t know of their existence, or if they do, they haven’t a clue how to open it. Ramani says instructions and a fluorescent lining for the windows are in the making.
As for additional expenditure, Ramani says that the new coaches are likely to cost Rs 3.5 lakh extra. It now costs Rs 40 lakh to build a non-sleeper second class coach, a sleeper costs Rs 50 lakh, an AC chair car Rs 95 lakh and an AC sleeper car Rs 98 lakh to a crore.
‘‘Just adding the escape hatches and new doors will cost Rs 15,000 per coach,’’ says Ramani, adding that it can be easily done as all of the Indian Railways’ 35,000 coaches come up for overhauling every year.
A prototype of the redesigned coach should be ready by September-end, says Ramani. ‘‘So, hopefully, the 1,600 coaches we build in 2004 will have all these new safety features. With the Rs 17,000 crore the Central Government has sanctioned to the Railways, this should be no problem.’’