Indian Railways’ 24-coach cap

If other countries can have passenger trains with 40 or even 50 coaches, what is the constraint for the IR here?

Idon’t know how many people are familiar with the name of Harindhar Reddy as a poet. I like his poems. There is one titled The lonely train on the lonely track with 24 coaches painted black, with the line occurring as a refrain at the end of every paragraph. There is also site called 24coaches. It is a wonderful source of information about IR (Indian Railways) and is run by an unnamed railway fan. In either case, we have a coach number of 24.

What’s the longest train in the world? The answer depends on whether you mean passenger or freight. The really long trains in the world (Australia, Canada, South Africa, USA, Brazil, China) are for freight. Three kilometres, or approaching three kilometres, seems to be a standard fare. At 1.4 km, India’s longest freight train, the Maruti freight train run by Central Railway between Bilaspur and Bhuswal, is a tad shorter. However, as a relative rarity, there is a long passenger train. This is the Ghan (originally named Afghan Express after Afghan camel drivers) between Adelaide and Darwin. This is 1.4 km long. India doesn’t have long passenger trains, 24 coaches is the cap. If other countries can have passenger trains with 40 or even 50 coaches, what is the IR constraint?

Let’s ask a different question. Why do few Indian trains run with 24 coaches? There are trains and trains and not all are expected to run with 24 coaches. But surely the 1,400 Superfast Express trains can. You will hear four possible arguments.

First, there may be a point about hauling capacity of locomotives. Down the years, passenger locomotives have become more powerful. Remember that electric passenger locomotives are WAP-s (W for broad gauge, A for electric and P for passenger). IR’s fleet ranges from WAP-1 to WAP-7. Under average conditions, to take the example of a Rajdhani rake, WAP-1 could haul 18 coaches, WAP-3 increased it to 19, WAP-4 to 24-26 and WAP-7 to 26.

Second, someone may mention emergency braking distance. A train isn’t an automobile. It takes a long distance to stop. Emergency braking distance is a function of speed, acceleration, terrain, gradient, mass of the train, kind of brake, driver’s reflexes and several other things. Let’s assume a steady speed of 110 km/hour. With 16 coaches, the emergency braking distance will be around 1 km. With 26 coaches it increases to 1.5 km. I don’t see how this is an argument, unless the twist is that with scarce track, I can often plan for 1 km braking distance, but not 1.5 km. Even then, it sounds spurious.

Third, there may be a mention of length of railway platforms. If the train is too long, some of it will remain outside the platform and cause difficulties for passengers. With many Indian railway platforms featuring in global “longest” lists, this seems odd. The world’s three longest railway platforms are from India — Gorakhpur, Kollam and Kharagpur, in that order and all three are longer than 1 km. In addition, Bilaspur, Jhansi and Sonepur figure in the top-10 list. However, historically, many railway platforms were just about 300 metres long.

Let’s play around with numbers. Shall we use Integral Coach Factory (ICF) or Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB)? LHB coaches are more modern, let’s use those. The length of a LHB coach is 24.7 metres. Multiplied by 24, we have 592.8 metres. (Out of 24 coaches, 22 will carry passengers. The other two will be generator cars.) A WAP-7 is 20.6 metres long. Perhaps one wants to add a pantry car. The upshot there is a train that’s around 620 metres long. Are platforms long enough to handle such trains? Maybe not. Remember, if it is Superfast Express trains, all 7,000-plus stations aren’t relevant. One has in mind around 400 stations (A1+A). If I am not wrong, platforms on these are supposed to have a minimum length of 550 metres. Most are longer. Thus, there will be a few where lengths will have to be increased by about 70 metres. A genuine problem, but not that serious.

Fourth, sometimes, trains have to wait on loop lines for other trains to pass. The standard length of a loop line is 686 km. In general, loop lines are also a spurious argument, at least for passenger trains. (They are a valid argument when it comes to increasing length of goods trains, where loops need to be 1500 metres.) If arguments against increasing length of Superfast Express trains to 24 coaches are not that serious, the constraint must be inertia and rolling stock shortages. (Rolling stock is owned by zones, not IR.) This is the background to IR’s recent decision of identifying 300 groups of trains where there will be standardised interchangeable rakes of 22 coaches (passenger coaches).

In 2016, Lucknow Mail became the first train to run with 24 coaches permanently. (This has two generating cars and two EOGs, so number of passenger coaches is 20.) More than platform and loop lengths, challenge will be production of LHB coaches. In 2014-15, around 550 were produced annually. In 2017-18, the base is about 2,500. ICF (Chennai) has switched to LHB production. With Kapurthala and Rae Bareli thrown in, and expanded and modernised, 7,000 is doable, 8,000 a bit more ambitious. In any event, there won’t be only one lonely train (Lucknow Mail) on a lonely track with 24 coaches. Nor will the rakes be black.