Indian Railways to manufacture their own 160kph train sets

Apparently because of unwillingness of established vendors to meet the cost and delivery criteria that IR desires, they will simply do a technology transfer deal to one of their Passenger Coach manufacturing facilities and build the sets themselves. An interesting case study of onshoring and bringing manufacturing in house! I guess if you are large enough and have the backing of the government and people you can do all sorts of interesting things to make things happen.

https://www.railwaynews.net/indian-railways-to-manufacture-trainsets-running-at-160-kmh.html

Well, it all sounds great in the write up and description of the new units...

Call me an old cynic...

Ed.

caravanman said:

Well, it all sounds great in the write up and description of the new units...

Call me an old cynic...

Ed.

Click to expand...

This is actually no different from any other piece of rail equipment that Indian Railways manufactured. In the last six decades it has never bought a piece of foreign originating equipment without attaching a technology transfer rider to the deal, and in case of successful pieces they have followed through in eventually manufacturing it themselves using the technology transfer clause. Where such technology transfer could not be worked out the piece of equipment saw an early death. Perhaps the one exception was the EMD WDM-4 where the price was not right, so IR went with the Alco WDM-2 instead for local manufacture, and the WDM-4s lived their natural life and then were junked. Similar was the case with the early AC locomotives from Japan and Europe WAM-1, WAM-2, WAG-1, WAG-2 etc. The indigenous WAM-4 and derivatives became the workhorse before a spate of new technology transfers started bringing in the WAP-5, WAP-7 and WAG-9.

jis said:

caravanman said:

Well, it all sounds great in the write up and description of the new units...

Call me an old cynic...

Ed.

Click to expand...

This is actually no different from any other piece of rail equipment that Indian Railways manufactured. In the last six decades it has never bought a piece of foreign originating equipment without attaching a technology transfer rider to the deal, and in case of successful pieces they have followed through in eventually manufacturing it themselves using the technology transfer clause. Where such technology transfer could not be worked out the piece of equipment saw an early death. Perhaps the one exception was the EMD WDM-4 where the price was not right, so IR went with the Alco WDM-2 instead for local manufacture, and the WDM-4s lived their natural life and then were junked. Similar was the case with the early AC locomotives from Japan and Europe WAM-1, WAM-2, WAG-1, WAG-2 etc. The indigenous WAM-4 and derivatives became the workhorse before a spate of new technology transfers started bringing in the WAP-5, WAP-7 and WAG-9.

Click to expand...

Sounds like a non-Indian manufacturer that sells equipment to the Indian Railways should presume there will not be a follow-up order whether the equipment works out for IR or not. The first order will, absent unusual circumstances, also be the last order.

Unless it was part of a bigger long term deal. It is unusual for IR to buy odd lot pieces of equipment anyway.

My cynicism was directed mostly at the "plush" etc. descriptions...

Given that India has a mass of very bright talent, it seems odd that it won't design and make it's own modern train sets from scratch?

Maybe some key components have worldwide patents on them?

Ed.

caravanman said:

My cynicism was directed mostly at the "plush" etc. descriptions...

Given that India has a mass of very bright talent, it seems odd that it won't design and make it's own modern train sets from scratch?

Maybe some key components have worldwide patents on them?

Ed.

Click to expand...

International copyright agreements have evolved into an almost universal worldwide law. Meeting requirements in one country grants protections (if not enforcement) in almost all other countries. Patent laws aren't nearly as universal in structure or interpretation.

caravanman said:

My cynicism was directed mostly at the "plush" etc. descriptions...

Given that India has a mass of very bright talent, it seems odd that it won't design and make it's own modern train sets from scratch?

Maybe some key components have worldwide patents on them?

Ed.

Click to expand...

It has more to do with saving time and resources and avoiding reinventing the wheel, if they can get it for the right price with rights to innovate based on the acquired technology. IR shops have done amazing things by refactoring the technology pieces acquired to create equipment that fits Indian conditions and conditions in other countries where they have successfully exported equipment to in Asia and Africa.

Sort of like, one could either start building something based on acquired computing platform and OS technology, or insist on building the whole thing ground up in house. The latter makes less sense than the former if you can get the right conditions with the acquisition made under the former process.

For example, the WAP-7 Class electric passenger locomotive is an Indian developed derivation from the WAG-9 freight locomotive and the WAP-5 passenger locomotive, both of which were imported initially with technology transfer and derivation rights. Now both WAP-5s and WAG-9s are manufactured in India and in addition WAP-7s have become the passenger workhorse with better acceleration and operating characteristics with typical Indian passenger trains than either AP-5 or AG-9 are.

I always imagine that trains are pretty "low tech", with motors, couplings, controllers being pretty simple? Somehow I think that doing a project like this would be better "in house", than giving a profit to other foreign businesses.

Designing and building from scratch may cost more initially, but also creates jobs, and keeps wealth inside the country?

Without knowing what the price of these "technology transfer permits" is, one can only guess...

Ed.

It takes too much time, specially given Indian propensity to get side tracked.

The cost is actually pretty reasonable I am told by someone that I know who was a financial analyst working for the Railway Board. They have an extremely good track record of moving relatively quickly from technology acquisition to full indigenous productization.

Oh and railway equipment is anything but low tech these days. We have quite aways from Stephenson's times you know.

Yes, more advanced than steam, but it's not rocket science, which India does seem to have sorted!

Ed.

Actually a modern diesel or electric engine has a lot of control systems that bear quite a bit of resemblance to such systems in rockets.

India did import rocket motor technology from Russia to build upon. So no different from what they do with rail equipment.

Ok, I imagined they had created their own rocket design.

Anyway, I look forward to riding one of these new trainsets if they go into service before I am too old to visit India again!

Ed.

For that matter the Americans imported ... errr .... appropriated German technology and scientists to get their rockets going in right earnest. Same with a whole bunch of turbojet technology too.

That's true... I think us Brits gave some jet engines to Russia too, dunno why their own early jets were so similar to those...?

Good job no one is spreading destructive nuclear technology all around the world !

Ed.