Chennai: Does travel in a rusty railway coach make you feel ill at ease? Your long nagging woes may come to an end soon.
For swanky new coaches with visually appealing designs, optimum safety features and comfort at par with global standards are not very far. Integral Coach Factory, the premiere coach vendor of Indian Railways, has signed an MoU with IIT-Madras for eight different projects to achieve this.
The projects include studying the use of fire retardant, biodegradable and recyclable material in coaches, vibration analysis for better passenger comfort and efficient emergency exit windows besides erecting photovoltaic cells atop coaches to tap solar power.
Computer modeling of airflow in AC coaches and designing coaches for standard and interior furnishing and skin tensioning of coach walls for improved surface quality are other components of the MoU.
Nearly Rs 25 lakh has been allotted for each of the eight projects, most of which would be over by July 2014, Pankaj Kumar, chief mechanical engineer, ICF told Deccan Chronicle.
Often passenger’s complaint about airflow being high on the upper berth and relatively low in the lower berth, Kumar said adding that computer modeled air conditioning would ensure uniform flow to all parts of the coach.
For instance, emergency exit windows would be redesigned in such a way that it would open only from inside, unlike the existing ones that give access to people from outside, he added.
Erection of the photovoltaic cells atop coaches is estimated to help meet the power demand of a train up to 60 per cent.
Alternators generate up to 4.5 KV power to keep the fans, lights and ACs running, the photovoltaic cells would generate 2.5-3 KV, which would keep the fans and lights running, said Ashok K. Agarwal while displaying the National Energy Conservation award given to Integral Coach Factory recently by the Union government for reducing its power consumption.
