indian railways

We all know that it is really big and almost everyone of has our own complaints.. but there are a lot of things about the Indian railways that we don’t know about nor do we care about or we don’t have time to look at the details.. almost everyone who has studied electrical engineering atleast for one semester would know that it is a dc series motor which is used in electric locomotives and electric multiple units .. there is also something called DMU ..it is not diesel multiple unit .. but a diesel electric multiple unit .There is a diesel engine which drives a generator .and the current produced drives another dc series motor. Hats off to BHEL which now produces these huge motors which were earlier being imported.

At first when lights were put on the coaches the normal 220v/40W bulbs and 220v/60w were being used which led to a lot of loss to the railways because people had a habit of pilfering the bulbs and fans .. so they came up with a simple solution to. make all the items steal proof .. they simply switched to a lower voltage .. now all the lights and fans in all the coaches work in 110v power supply .. so the thief has to really smart and probably would require a step down transformer ..which is a big ask for the average Indian thief. Now almost all coaches have tubelights which don’t require a starter ..and they make electronic chokes right here at ICF. All the furniture(whatever bear minimum that is there ) on the coaches are meant to last .. they are made of really good quality steel and wood …..

What I thought to be common knowledge had once been proved wrong by my friend .. the power lines that on top of the tracks are 25k volts (25,000 volts ) ..my friend thought that they were 220v supply !!! .. just think of the work that has to be put into the electrification work done by them. Nxt time u travel on a train just look at the overhead lines and u can see how much work has been done at the track intersections .i.e .when the tracks intersect the overhead lines would also have cross over … nxt time look at how it is done .. simple but effective idea . Even in a straight stretch it is not a single wire but only segments again another simple idea to solve the problem ,,, one line which is about to end go is a slow incline while a new line comes down at the same angle and at the point where they are at the same height the pantograph ( that’s the big claw like thing on top of locomotives .. ) switches to the new line … great stuff