Delivering A Dream - From Train 18 to Vande Bhaat

(Courtesy: The Hindu)

(Caution: Long Article. It first appeared in an eBook of The Hindu several months ago)

It was the September of 2018. The integral Coach Factory of Chennai, commonly known as the ICF, was quietly building the Vande Bharat Express for many months, and the world was completely oblivious of what was happening there. A dream was being given shape in steel, copper, fibreglass, and foam and glass, a dream that was not even considered viable for generations. It was being realised on the factory floor by a dedicated team of designers, engineers, purchase experts, finance officers, shop floor artisans, and supervisors, and equally dedicated contractors. Never before had such a cohesive team been cobbled together to build something that was seen only in pictures. Indeed, the guiding image for them was a single framed photograph of a foreign trainset hanging in the conference room of the design centre.

It would be a surprise to the readers that even the makers didn’t know that they were building something that would catch the imagination of the nation, of the competitive international manufacturers, and indeed of the Prime Minister himself. It was only when the pictures of semifinished rail cars were snapped by the shopfloor workers and proudly shared with families and friends that the media sat up and took notice. This was followed by a video interview by a reputed national news house, and a country woke up to the magic that was unfolding silently but surely.

The Genesis and the Beginning

Sudhanshu Mani, the General Manager of ICF, obtained, after much pleading and beseeching the Railway Board, the permission to build a new genre of trains, a trainset, just two of them. To his credit he had told his team to begin work on the design in advance of the approvals. Even tenders for many sub-systems were floated in anticipation of the approval. He then went about creating a team that could deliver before the end of the year 2018. The train was even named Train-18 to emphasize the deadline. Later, it was lovingly rechristened the Vande Bharat Express by none other than the Prime Minister himself.

Indian Railways are a vertically integrated organisation. They not only operate trains but also design and manufacture them. There are three railcar manufacturing units, viz. the Integral Coach Factory Chennai, the Rail Coach Factory Kapurthala Punjab and the Modern Coach Factory Rae Bareli. There are many locomotive factories as well. What is equally impressive is the vast network of maintenance workshops and depots that the IR have built since pre-independence era.

IR have been building their own passenger railcars and locomotives in thousands with reasonably good technology that have served a poor and developing country well. It has been possible to carry the millions at the lowest fares in the world.  As different from a locomotive-hauled train, a trainset has the motive-power, or the propulsion power built into the passenger cars themselves. In a combination of a few cars, one or two of them would be motored, or powered. When many of such units of railcars are strung together into a train, the combination is called a Multiple Unit, a Diesel Multiple Unit or DMU, or an Electrical Multiple Unit or EMU. Such trains are also called trainsets since they move together and even taken up for maintenance in the same combination. The Vande Bharat Express was technically not the first trainset. Suburban EMUs of Mumbai and other cities are also trainsets that have been in service for decades.

What is the Vande Bharat Express

Did the average rail user of India ask for such a modern train? She couldn’t have, since even though she may have longingly seen photographs and movies of modern trainsets of Europe and Japan, these sleek, modern, fast and comfortable trains were a distant dream for her. The engineers of ICF had planned to surprise them.

Even though the Vande Bharat Express was not a new genre as EMUs were already running, the technical demands on such a train would be enormous. High speed of up to 180kmph, better crash-protection, higher passenger comfort, reliability over long distance runs were the defining parameters that the team ICF has set at the design stage. Passenger comfort was as much a function of the train dynamics, ride characteristics and acceleration-braking behaviour as the seats, air-conditioning, toilets, lighting, and general ambience. Train dynamics also defined the speed potential and safety of the train. ICF, and indeed no other manufacturer in the developing world, had ventured into these unknowns.

ICF had the best software and workstations in the design centre, which was also home to some of the smartest brains of the country in Computer Aided Design and Simulation techniques.

The Design

Even though the genre of trainsets was not new to ICF, which had already delivered hundreds of EMUs and DEMUs to the Indian Railways, the Train-18 was to be several notches higher in speed, comfort, and safety since it was to be designed for semi-high-speed and long-distance application. The first thing designers did, even before coach and seat layouts, was to tabulate where the existing designs and supply-chains fell short. The list was long and ICF alone couldn’t have met all requirements let alone design the subsystems. A few competent suppliers and contractors were invited for discussions with ICF designers. They came in all earnestness and when they saw the seriousness and vision of the ICF, they became keen partners in the design process. That this happened without even a purchase order, or a tender in the pipeline, shows the mutual faith ICF had built with its suppliers and contractors.

Even though ICF had competent designers and the required design software and workstations, some external design consultants were hired for design of the bogies (undergear) and their validation by computer simulation. The air-conditioning was to be so designed that it cooled the passenger area uniformly, without a circulating fan and be noiseless. Advanced Computational Fluid Dynamics software was deployed to determine the duct design, air velocities and vents. The computer simulations cut down the design and validation time significantly as opposed to physical trials and testing. Results after the manufacture were so closed to the simulated values that even the designers were pleasantly surprised.

The design was finalised as multiple units of four railcars, two of which would be powered, or motored. Four such units would be joined together to make a sixteen-coach train that would seat about 1150 passengers in two classes, Economy and Business, better called AC Chair Car and Executive Class. It was possible to make eight, twelve, or even a twenty car trains without any loss of performance since each unit of four cars was an independent module of the train.

The underlying thought behind all design efforts was to create a new and pleasant experience for passengers that was previously never seen in India.  Since the volume was small, they were building only two trains, some import was inevitable. It was decided to import seats from Spain, from one of the best seat makers in the world. The sound insulation flooring, a sandwich of plywood and cork, the windscreen, the lighting, pantry equipment, even the aisle trolleys were sourced from among the best in the world. Now, of course, most of these are totally indigenous. But the best equipment that went into the first two trains served as a benchmark for indigenous suppliers, who rose to meet those standards in later builds. All purchases were done though the system of open and advertised tenders.

What impacts a traveller or even an onlooker first is the exterior of the train. The paint scheme, the colour combination, was finalised after making a one meter by one meter sample of various combinations, at least half-a-dozen of them. The paint had to retain its gloss and quality over the years, and a departure had to be made from the existing paint system. Finally, a world-class paint supplier was discovered, who delivered a six-layer paint system, with a seventh one, a nano-coat that prevents dust from sticking on the surface. The paint proved so durable that the trains didn’t need to be repainted for over six years even as other coaches required a fresh coat in three years or earlier.

TCMS – The Holy Grail of Source Code

The term source code has recently entered media debate and public consciousness in the context of computer programmes that run fighter aircraft, other military armament, and equipment. The refusal of a European aircraft seller to share the source code had infuriated an entire nation. The TCMS, or the Train Control Management System, is the source code that makes a complex system like the Vande Bharat Express run at all. Believe me, the complexity that the train like this presents to its builders and system integrators surpass that of a fighter aircraft. The TCMS controls the train propulsion, braking, air-conditioning, automatic doors, lighting, public address system, headlights and horns, fire detection, and every possible sub-system. It even logs the performance and faults and helps the loco pilot diagnose minor faults and rectify them.

Even though the EMUs and locomotives had some form of simple and rudimentary TCMS for years, what was needed by the designers of the Train-18 was a code that enabled reliable service and retrofitting of diverse sub-systems from multiple vendors. A competent propulsion system manufacturer from Hyderabad rose to the occasion and delivered the million-line code that worked from the word go. A good TCMS, the operating system of the train, was so far the preserve of less than half-a-dozen trainset manufacturers of Europe, Japan, South Korea, and China. India now boasts of her own that equals the best in the world if not surpasses them. This single factor of design, which was being developed even as the sheet metal was being cut and welded for the carbody, enabled a leap into the big league and the world sat up and took notice.

A New Design and Manufacture Paradigm

It is said that the perfect is the enemy of the good. Relentless pursuit of the perfect causes procrastination, delay and even justifies inaction. The average design-to-delivery time of a new train system anywhere in the world is thirty-six months. ICF had decided to deliver the train in half that time and broke the conventional mould by two major steps – use computer simulation for preliminary design validation and secondly, adopting a bold new paradigm of design-as-you-build. Hence, as soon as the major design parameters were achieved or were near completion, production started on the shop-floor in tandem. As in any new project so complex problems arose in areas of equipment layout, weight distribution, design of seats, interiors, and toilets, air-conditioning and lighting and they were solved on the fly. The result was a train in less than eighteen months that surpassed the most ambitious dreams of even its designers and builders.

Even as the Train-18 had begun to attract attention of media and public, its beauty and modern appeal had failed to attract the attention of the top management. When the train was ready to be flagged off from ICF for field testing and dynamic validation, ICF wanted to invite the railway minister for the big day in the November of 2018. The minister declined. Earlier even the top management of the Chennai Metro Rail Corporation, upon inviting to look at what ICF was doing and explore the possibility of including ICF in future purchases of metro trains said that they were too busy to come. The Chairman Railway Board, however, readily agreed to come down and flag off the prototype Train-18 and was full of praise for the Team ICF.

Things were soon to change, when the Prime Minister himself took notice of what ICF had done and lovingly christened it the Vande Bharat Express. The first train was personally flagged off by the Prime Minister on the fifteenth of February 2019. The occasion, the pictures, and the mood was captured by an appreciative media and rail enthusiasts in India, Japan, China, South Korea and many other countries.

The design software provider of Solid Works, M/S Dassault of France, the same company that makes Rafale fighters, was watching. Their international business head visited the ICF several times and was stunned by the complexity and pace of the design that was underway. During one of his visits he remarked, half in jest, but fully in appreciation, why the ICF couldn’t help the Heavy Vehicle Factory of Defence at Avadi, a mere ten kilometres away, design the Main Battle Tank. He said that the Avadi factory had been designing a battle tank for three decades whereas ICF had designed a far more complex train in just six months.

Interruption and Restart

Even after the Prime Minister taking keen interest in the new design and praising the efforts of ICF as a shining example of his Make-in-India mission, series production of the Vande Bharat Express was stalled for three and a half years. The prototypes were not only designed and made in a record time of eighteen months but also at a fraction of the going world prices of similar stock. The 16-coach train was built at a cost of ninety-eight crores rupees, or a mere six crore per coach. The ICF made train had upset the applecart of reputed train manufactures and had set a price benchmark that was troubling for them and also for the proponents of import-is-better thinking within Indian Railways. Even a low-speed, low-features metro trains used to cost ten crore rupees per railcar. Tenders were issued for further production and repeatedly cancelled on the facetious plea of creating better competition, a level playing field and improvement in energy efficiency.

To further sabotage this stellar indigenous achievement a dozen senior officers were slapped with several Vigilance cases, their reputation sullied, and careers destroyed. Finally, the Central Vigilance Commission saw through the game, completely exonerated all the targeted officers, and reprimanded the Railways for its undue vigilantism. In a case reminiscent of Nambi Narayan of ISRO and scuttling of the indigenous cryogenic engine design production of Vande Bharat Express had come to a standstill. Only upon the personal intervention of the Prime Minister, once again, the hounding of the creators of the train by the railway vigilance stopped even though some of them had their careers irreversibly damaged.

Nothing new was achieved after three years of fake claims of cleaning the Augean stables. Sabotage, victimisation, and delay were the only outcomes.  Finally, regular production of the Vande Bharat trains started in ICF with the same old design minor tweaks notwithstanding and the same old suppliers. Today there are over seventy-two of these trains are criss-crossing the land, albeit many of them being half-trains of eight coaches only.

Too much of a Good Thing?

The Railway Ministry, in absence of anything bigger to showcase before the public, hung onto the coat-tails of the Vande Bharat design. The illusory imagination of the policy makers in the Rail Bhawan decided that Vande Bharat was what the people of India needed. Undue management attention and budget allocation were given to production of more and more rakes of the now famous trainset to the exclusion of ordinary second-class travellers. The Vande Bharat trains were designed as chair-car type day-trains that would cover intercity distances in five to six hours, eight maximum. Fares were a third higher than the Shatabdi trains, which were to be eventually replaced by the Vande Bharat chair cars. But even after a lot more of these trains were built than the Shatabdis in service, and even when their speeds barely exceeded existing services, premium fares remained unpalatable to the common man on many routes. As a result, the occupancy of these trains, even the 8-coach ones remains low on many routes.

Not to be left behind the original vision of the designers of ICF there is now a misplaced zeal to push a sleeper design even though it makes no sense. No other country in the world, not even the vast China, has sleeper trainsets. Trainsets are designed to shorten travel times from one point to another and then make a quick reversal for the return journey, which is facilitated by its bi-directional nature. An overnight sleeper train, on the other hand, reaches the destination in the morning and waits on washing and stabling lines during the day. After due cleaning and attention, they begin their return journey again in the evening reaching the original station the next morning. Such a service is well and more efficiently served by loco-hauled trains, where immediate reversibility is not a necessity. Indian Railways already have LHB passenger cars and locomotives capable of 160kmph at nearly half the cost of a trainset like the Vande Bharat. Yet contracts have been given to two companies for manufacture of two hundred rakes of sleeper-type Vande Bharat trains. This is in addition to what the ICF and BEML would be making over the next five years.

The sleeper version is driven by a compromise. The Vande Bharat express, chair car or sleeper, alone cannot speed up travel even though they charge premium fares. They are capable of a maximum speed of 160kmph yet are constrained to run at average speeds of 70-75kmph. The speed potential of even the older rolling stock was never achieved due to poor quality of tracks and even poorer maintenance. Lakhs of crores sunk in track renewals and upgradation have not resulted in any significant improvement in speeds on Indian Railways’ network. If tracks had been given the matching attention of the top management, it would have been possible to travel from Delhi to Ahmedabad, Delhi to Patna, Mumbai to Bengaluru, or Delhi to Nagpur in six to seven hours in a chair car. Longer distances would still be covered by conventional overnight loco-hauled trains. This is how the high-speed rail-networks of the world operates. In other words, there is a mismatch of technologies of rolling stock, tracks and signalling, a gap that is being bridged sub-optimally with sleeper Vande Bharat Express.

The Way Forward

The Vande Bharat Express has demonstrated that indigenous design capabilities of India are second to none. The manufacturing prowess of a government department and the matching competence of our supply-chain have indisputably established India’s strength in frontiers of technology. From a 160kmph Vande Bharat to a 250kmph high speed rail system is but a step, which can be unleashed equally quickly by suitable policy support from the government. There is, however, a need to understand that India has vast populations in the poor and middle classes, whose travel needs cannot be sacrificed at the altar of and in the euphoria of technology. Indeed, technology should enable inclusion of the masses towards a cost-effective, reliable, safe and fast travel across the country. Private enterprise and the public sector need to drive inspiration from the ICF, a government department, that carved a creative path to success even though bound by rules and procedures that were essentially made for a secretariat. The ICF had delivered an iPhone at the price of an Android device.

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