Even as the government gives the now famous slogan a global push, our very own Indian Railways continues to fully import items like wheels for air-conditioned trains like Rajdhani and Duronto.
Even as the government gives the now famous slogan a global push, our very own Indian Railways continues to fully import items like wheels for air-conditioned trains like Rajdhani and Duronto.
Failing to indigenise the manufacturing of these special type of wheels is now costing the Railways dearly, with an impending shortage forcing the Railway board to recently request foreign suppliers from Switzerland and Austria to make emergency supplies before time in April as against scheduled supply in May. It has also requested state-run steel maker SAIL to speed up developing such wheels.
"There is serious crisis of LHB wheels on zonal railways and production units. Global tender has been finalized and letter of acceptance dated March 17 has been issued to Stork International of Austria and KLW Wheelco of Switzerland for 11685 and 2337 numbers respectively. Stork has offered first lot of 3,000 wheels for inspection in first week of May. However, firm has been requested to supply 1020 wheels by April 20 to ensure early availability of these wheels to lndian Railways," the minutes of a recent meeting of the Railway Board said.
LHB wheels are those used in air-conditioned stainless steel coaches based on designs of Linke-Hofmann-Busch of Germany, now owned by Alstom. Initially imported, these special type of coaches are now being manufactured in India since 2002. The wheels of these coaches are specially manufactured to run at a speed of 160 km/h reaching up to a maximum of 200 km/h carrying coaches bigger in length and width than conventional steel coaches.
With no Indian supplier, the LHB wheels are imported from across the globe from suppliers like Bonatrans of Czech Republic, Taiyuan Heavy Industry Co of China, apart from Stork and KLW Wheelco.
The crisis may end in near future with SAIL's Durgapur Steel Plant being directed to speed up their development efforts. "SAIL was advised to expedite development of LHB wheels to reduce dependence on import of LHB wheels...development of LHB wheels initiated by SAIL may be expedited," the meeting mentioned.
Not just SAIL, department's own Rail Wheel Factory (RWF) at Yelahanka in Bangalore, has also been directed to rush their development initiative. RWF had earlier developed the design and specifications for such wheels and submitted it to Railway's Research Design and Standards Organisation but not much progress has been made since.
Lack of availability of domestic components is in fact hurting Railway's plan to completely switch to LHB type coaches and stopping the production of conventional type coaches as recommended by its High Level Safety Review Committee.
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