TUGHLAKABAD DEPOTI. INTRODUCTION

Tughlakabad Depot (TKD) is an excellent premise for maintenance of diesel locomotives and repair common and small breakdown in locomotives and also for training drivers. It is located at about 160 km from Agra on the outskirts of capital city Delhi. The Depot was set up in the year 1970 and has the present strength of holding and repairing 155 locomotives at a time in the diesel loco shed. TKD also has the state of art Diesel Training Centre (DTC) for training diesel locomotive drivers. Diesel shed, Tughlakabad has the distinction of being the first diesel shed to get 14000 certification in Indian Railway. The shed houses loco ranging from WDM-2, WDM-3A, WDM-3C, WDM-3D, WDP-1 and WDP-3A.

II. BRIEFINGAs we reached the premises, we were taken to a seminar room in DTC and were briefed about TKD. The Instructor told us about the various units of TKD and the units we would be visiting in our Industrial Tour. He told us about the DTC that how it has been developed into an Asian level centre training diesel loco drivers around the globe especially from African Countries. The DTC facility provides round the clock training for drivers and trains about 8 trainees per shift. It is a government norm that each Loco Driver has to undergo a brief training period after every 3yrs and this facility which houses a simulator provides a brief course to the driver and his performance is checked based upon his skills.

The DTC centre also has a lab which is used for training drivers about common faults occurring in the engine. There were 16 to 18 projects in that lab which are used for explaining those 16 to 18 faults in detail.

III. DIESEL TRAINING CENTREThe Instructor continued and took us to the training centre for drivers and gave us an introduction about the simulator. Simulator is actually a machine which imitates the real environment but is actually not real. It is a replica of real situation. The 1 st generation VGA II Simulator at TKD was installed in the year 1994 by an American company Ittary from Chicago and Indian company TPCL collaboration. It cost Indian Railways about Rs 76,500,000. The plan for adopting an advance 3G simulator was dropped because drivers did not had knowledge of

computers and it would be hard to educate drivers. Besides this simulator there is one more simulator installed in Kanpur for diesel loco drivers. It is capable of delivering training to Diesel Locomotive deriver round the clock in 3 shifts. In today’s date DTC has trained about 11000 Loco pilots, Assistant Pilots, Loco inspector

Training for each driver is held for 40 days (6 days a week) time and is carried out after every 3 years time.

A. WEEKLY SCHEDULE OF THE TRAINEE:

1st Day (Monday): Introduction

Familiarization with diesel simulator General Instructions Practice run on any section through LDP.

2nd Day (Tuesday): Initial Performance Evaluation

3rd Day (Wednesday):

Exercise with faster Train Trouble Shooting

4th Day (Thursday): Performance evaluation regarding observing the safety rules such as:

Passing a train from Loop Line Stopping the train on stop signal Brake Application Use of Dynamic Brake Energy Conservation

5th Day (Friday):

Performance Test on a Fast Train Traffic Rules Blowing of Horn Instructions to be observed while passing unmanned gate

6th Day (Saturday):

Judging the performance regarding driver’s knowledge Last day performance Evaluation

After the rigorous training the trainees are evaluated and on the basis of this evaluation the criteria for promotion of a loco driver can be done.

B. ADVANTAGES OF SIMULATOR

1. HANDS ON TRAINING- The knowledge of learning rail road routes is imparted to drivers by simulator.

2. REAL TIME EVALUATION IN VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT-It is hard evaluating the efficiency of a driver in real time environment but simulator provides a control environment thus one could evaluate the relative efficiency of a worker. Also while a trainee is being evaluated, 1 trainee watches him outside so that he can discuss vital points with his instructor.

3. Graphical and Numerical Information

4. LOW COST: I takes a shorter duration rather than training in real time environment so cost of training is reduced also the number of people which could be accommodated with a Locomotive are also limited (1 Driver ,1 Assistant Driver, 2 Trainees, 1 Instructor)

5. INDEPENDENCY: While training in real time environment several clearances are

required. This leads to bureaucratic delays while Simulator can be run and managed by a small department consisting of few personnel.

6. No loss of life and property due to mistake where as there is no “Retake” in real life.

C. SIMULATION ROOM

The Simulation Room consisted of big projectors projecting the videos of tracks on the screens and in between it consisted of a small cabin which is replica of the Diesel Loco cabin with all the controls as in the real time Diesel Locomotive. It is mounted on pneumatically driven rams which are provided so that they give the vibration effect as in case of locomotive motion. This is a unique feature as it gives a 6D effect.

Inside the cabin the instructor gave us information about the various apparatus needed for driving a diesel locomotive also gave us hands on experience of driving diesel locomotive in simulator. The simulator was based on basic diesel locomotive WDM-2

The Instructor described how a diesel loco is driven. Before starting off from a station the loco driver asks the guard of the train whether he should start the diesel loco or not by blowing horn. If the guard raises green flag than the driver again blows the horn for the passengers to board the train. Then he checks whether train is in level or not. In reality the driver visually inspects the level of the train, where as in simulator there is a computer screen which tells about the level of the train. An accordingly the brakes and acceleration (1-8) is controlled. Diesel loco had two types of brakes, semiautomatic nine as loco brake and automatic nine as train brake. There are two speedometers, mechanical speedometer and electric speedometer. Other than that there were a no of parameters for controlling and trolling. Finally we were shown how a train is driven by a loco driver by the instructor.

IV. TUGHLAKABAD DIESEL LOCO SHED We were led into a room which consisted of a working engine model.

MODEL: WDM-2 (working model)

CONFIGURATIONS

POWER: IHP: 2600 HP

BHP: 2400 HP.

CYLINDER: 16 cylinders

TYPE: V type and CI engine.

COMPRESSION RATIO: 13:1

PISTON RINGS: 3 compressor rings and 2 oil rings

LUBRICATING OIL: R413

LUBRICATING TYPE: forced lubrication

FUEL: High speed diesel oil

For higher efficiency and power per stroke there were 2 inlet valve for each cylinder and there is water jacket surrounding the engine for cooling the engine and has capacity of about 1200 Lt. Cooling of the water in jacket is done by exhaust fans. The engine has a system such that the exhaust gases which are moving out and as they move out they strike the turbine blades which drives the impellor to compress the atmospheric air for suction stroke

Consumption of fuel

In ideal case/ starting condition - 25 Lt/hr

Moving with load (48 tons) - 480 Lt/hr

Moving with load- 80 Lt/hr

The engine’s firing order is 14768523 and there is 45 degree difference between the firing of each cylinder. Locomotive engine runs from 400 rpm to 1000 rpm.

DIESEL LOCOMOTIVE TROUBLESHOOTING LABORATORYThe Research Design and Standard Organization (RDSO), Lucknow carries out the research and development for the railways and has set standard which are followed in all departments of railways..For maintenance of Diesel Loco the RDSO gives trainee on 16 to 18 projects.

Few of them are as follows:

Fuel Booster Motor

These motors drive the pumps that will take the low pressure fuel from the tank and increase fuel pressure dramatically for injection into the burner cans.

Radiator Fan

The Diesel loco has a radiator room section which has three indicators:

ETS-1-maximum temperature allowed is 64ºCETS-2-maximum temperature allowed is 68ºCETS-3-maximum temperature allowed is 90ºC

The first two indicates the temperature of driving fan where as last one indicates the temperature of coolant.

Generator Control

There are 5 types of generator used in diesel locos Some of these are as follows:

Auxiliary Generator: It is used for:

Charging battery Lighting Exciting the exciter generator

Exciter Generator

Expresser

Nowadays it has almost become obsolete. It was used for compression and exhaust purposes. It is used in vacuum and brakes for creating vacuum and air. It has been replaced by air these days. It runs with crankshaft.

Flow chart of flow of fuel

Fuel before filling

Fuel Tank

Crao Filter

Primary Filter

Secondary Filter

Motor/ Fuel Pump

Fuel Injection Pump

Brakes

There are 5 types of brakes used:

Air brakes Locomotive Brakes Emergency Brakes Hand Brake Dynamic Brakes or Rheostat

The minimum distance for braking is 600m.