The Hindu Business Line : Mountain rail gets oil-powered engine

THE Nilgiri Mountain Railway (NMR), which has been chugging along the picturesque Nilgiri Mountain range for close to a century has got a fresh lease of life thanks to the interaction between the Southern Railway and the Tiruchirapalli Regional Engineering College Science and Technology Park (TREC-STEP).

The NMR, which has been puffing along the 46 km route from Mettupalayam in the plains to Udhagamandalam has a chequered history. There have been rumours of discontinuing the operations, since it is not economical, drawing protests from the locals as well as tourists. There was a proposal for electrification, but that was given up for reasons of cost.

There have been disruptions in traffic, due to landslips during monsoons. The NMR is an engineering marvel. Starting from Mettupalayam in the plains at 1,700 ft MSL, it reaches a peak of 7,300 feet MSL near Fernhill before coming to a halt at Udhagamandalam that is at 7,228 MSL. There are 16 tunnels and more than 250 bridges. While the train is powered by a steam loco up to Coonoor, from there it is powered by a diesel engine.

Since the steam engine hauling or pushing the coaches (while up) are old (the youngest engine is about 50 years old!) and the quality of coal available is poor, the crew frequently water the loco and clean the fire.

The Southern Railway, which has been grappling with the issue of finding a viable alternative, decided to convert on an experimental basis one of the `X' class engines into an oil fired one. TREC- STEP, under the CII TDB-T-Net banner took up this work along with the Southern Railway. A whole lot of people-entrepreneurs, academicians, experts from the BHEL and other organisations chipped in.

The basic approach was to leave the heritage look of the steam loco intact (the NMR is pitching for a Heritage status from Unesco). The team had to design and integrate an oil fired combustion system within the space available. It was virtually a `boiler on wheels'.

There was meticulous planning and trial runs — in fact there were 70 trials over a period of 140 days — and involvement of 35 experts from institutions such as BHEL, REC, Cummins and TREC-STEP.

The engine was able to cover the distance 20 minutes ahead of time and was able to haul 6 coaches whereas coal fired ones had difficulty even in hauling four coaches. The successful conversion of a coal fired steam loco into an oil fired steam loco has come with several advantages — it has eliminated the use of coal as a fuel and the physical handling of coal by the crew is no longer needed and has brought down the emission levels.

A host of people including Mr M. Jayasingh, Chief Motive Power Engineer (Diesel), Southern Railway, Dr C.R. Kandaswamy, Member, Board of Governors, TREC-STEP and Mr R.M.P. Jawahar, Executive Director, TREC-STEP, besides several entrepreneurs in TREC-STEP and component manufacturers had participated in this exercise.

The successful conversion of coal fired NMR engine into an oil fired loco has come as a relief not only to the railways but to the thousands of tourists flocking the hill station and the local public, who had been resisting any attempt to discontinue the NMR operations.

The railways incur an annual expenditure of about Rs 3.5 crore in maintaining the NMR operations.

The Minister of State for Railway, Mr A.K. Moorthy, formally launched the oil fired steam locomotive of NMR from Mettupalayam to Coonoor at a function in Mettupalayam on Sunday.

Mr S. Dhasarathy, Member (Mechanical), Railway Board, New Delhi and Mr V. Anand, General Manager, Southern Railway, Chennai were among those present.

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Mountain rail gets oil-powered engine

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