The Hindu : Railways trying to improve quality of rails

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Aug 08, 2002

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Railways trying to improve quality of rails

By Vinay Kumar

NEW DELHI AUG. 7. The quality of the rails procured by the Railways continues to stir a debate among experts and safety analysts. After the November 1998 Khanna train disaster, in which over 200 persons were killed, it was found that defective rails were to blame.

In his report on the Khanna accident, the Chief Controller of Railway Safety had held the Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) and the Northern Railway responsible. Then came the damning report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) for 1998, which blamed the Railways for years of neglect towards this crucial aspect, noting that even prior to Khanna at least four accidents had occurred because the quality of rails supplied by BSP fell far short of safety standards. The report stated that not only had the Railways lost Rs. 68.67 crores in 1997-98, it had also not paid attention to the risk involved in laying rails with excess hydrogen level, with excessive residual stress and damaged surfaces.

The Railways need around 4.30 metric tonnes of rails annually and the BSP is the only indigenous supplier. The price is determined by a joint committee and the rails are paid for in advance.

Safety analysts point out that to save foreign exchange, successive governments were not inclined towards importing quality rails. A crucial hydrogen limit of 3 parts per million (PPM) was built into the specifications only in 1996. The Steel Authority of India Limited then agreed to adhere to the specification by vacuum degassing in a new plant that has since been commissioned. The SAIL was also permitted to supply only 72 ultimate tensile strength (UTS) rails while 90 UTS rails were being imported.

Well-placed sources in the Railway Ministry told The Hindu that the hydrogen content was recently brought down from 3 ppm to 2 and the BSP was taking efforts to supply rails of this standard. "We have an old association with the Bhilai plant as they are the sole suppliers of rails and we are their only customer. In another year or so, the BSP will come up to the world standards in rolling out quality rails," a source said.

For the current fiscal, the Railways have set a target of procuring 6 lakh metric tonnes of rails from the Bhilai plant. According to SAIL, the BSP unit has already set up an expensive de-gasser plant and ladle furnace, which enables it to manufacture rails with less than 3 ppm hydrogen content. After constant nudging by the Railways, the Bhilai plant installed "online ultrasonic flaw detectors", which detects defective rails. It also installed testing facilities for automatic marking of rails, which had surface defects.

Ministry sources said that the life of the rails in terms of gross million tonne (GMT) of traffic had gone up as the Railways had made its specifications more stringent.

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