Talk:Indian Railways/Archive 1

message: There are a cpl of statements, for instance "The credit goes to Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav for turn around...". Such statements can't be used in professional writing, as it is a personal opinion. 
The turn around in IR, could have been coz of
* Efforts of previous R Ministers, or efforts of some/all of Board Members, entirely Mr Lalu's efforts/ideas. We don't really know.
It is a fact that in Mr Lalu's term, IR made huge profit and turn-arounds. But Media habitually hypes up facts to fiction. Unless we come across authentic sources that confirms that the reason's behind the turn over were mostly/entirely Mr Lalu's ideas/initiative, we can't make that statement.
In any case, such sentences could be reworded to something like:
"It is generally acknowledged that the present turnaround.......blah blah blah...... has happened because of the initiatives of the current Rail Ministry". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by FatCow (talk • contribs) 05:21, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Unprofessional writing

message: I'd rather have the cleanup-tag back. The page still needs lots of work - freight operations, signalling, finance/budget etc. - and might also need to be split into many pages. Binand 14:33, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleanup

message: Indian rail suffers about 300 accidents per year .
Safety statistics published by Loss Prevention Association India Ltd  show for the Year 2000 1282 deaths were attributed to railroad accidents; 0.5% of the 255,883 deaths attributed to natural and un-natural accidents.  A further 16,638 died from other rail road accidents (6.5% of accidental deaths).These rail related deaths compare with only 72 from air crash and 80,118 due to road traffic accidents (31.3% of accidental deaths).
To understand the statistics though, they should be at least compared over several years - were the proportions the same a decade ago? - was there some one-off event in 2000 that raised the numbers?
It would also be useful to compare say transport miles - there are 4.5 times the number of deaths in road traffic accidents but are 4.5 times the number of miles travelled in India by road compared with the number of miles travelled by rail?
How does the accident rate compare with other rail networks?
Chandigarh Tribune interview with MR IIMS Rana (Chairman of the Railway Board from March 31 2002) published September 28 2002 quotes Mr Rana on accidents as follows:
:: "Over the years and decades, the safety performance of the Railways has been gradually improving. In the year 1960-61, there were 2131 accidents and in 2001-02, there were 415 accidents. This is despite the fact that there has been a five time increase in passenger and freight traffic. Let us compare with international standards.
::"There is a universal index of million accidents per million train kilometres. This was 5.5 in 1960s and it has come down to 0.65 in 2000-01 and .55 (provisional figure) this year. If you look at the accident frequency per one million train kilometres (East Japan Railway annual report 2002), Japanese Railways has .65 and in Germany 0.91. That means we are almost the lowest in the world and this, mind you, is despite the fact that we don’t have too many technological inputs."
On the subject of infrasturcture the interview reports:
::"Q: What is the overall situation on the renewal of direly needed tracks. What about replacement and rehabilitation of old bridges?
::"About Rs 3516.50 crore has been allocated for track renewal for 2002-03. The money allocated for rehabilitation of old bridges in this financial year is Rs 209.30 crore compared to Rs 111.53 crore in 2001-02. The budgetary allocation for rolling stock for this year is Rs 919.19 crore. Of the 1,19,984 railway bridges in India, 51,340 (44 per cent) are 100 years old. Till April 1 this year, 527 bridges were identified as distressed (which show signs of deterioration). Another 347 bridges are to be rehabilitated during 2002-03. Till July end, 61 such bridges had been rehabilitated. One thing that must be understood is that if some part of the railway infrastructure is weak, we introduce speed restrictions."
An article on September 9 crash of the Howrah-New Delhi Rajdhani Express by the World Socialist Web site discusses whether sabotage or poor infrastructure maintenance are causes of the accident and notes that the Indian Rail officials were quick to blame saboteurs perhaps in an effort to deflect criticisim of poor maintenance.
The article cites statistics on bridges: India has 51,340 rail bridges that are more than 100 years old and another 89,076 that are more than 60 years old. Of those, 526 are classified as badly in need of repair or “distressed”.  In 2001 the Mangalore-Chennai Mail train crashed in Kerala due to bridge failure; 59 people killed and 200 injured.  The article suggested that the 2002 Howrah-New Delhi Rajdhani Express was probably due to bridge failure.
The article refers to a 1998 review committee led by retired Supreme Court judge H.L. Khanna which pointed out that the two factors responsible for most rail accidents over the past decade were the poor state of bridges and the lack of track maintenance.  Perhaps this Wkipedia article could reference the Khanna committee recommendations.
--AYArktos 23:59, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Accident rate 

message: Congratulations to all those editors who ensured that this article has become a FA!! Way to go!! --Gurubrahma 09:52, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Congratulations!!  

message: What are "rake accidents"?  A typo?  Some Indian English or railroading jargon term with which I'm unfamiliar, and which should be explained?  Gene Nygaard 15:13, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Its a rail term used in India. A rake is known as "consist" in the US. I've removed the word, it was a vestige of an earlier version, before the article was split. =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:23, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Typo? 

message: Great article. A relatively minor thing I am concerned about is the chopping and changing between English English and Indian English versions of the various place names. Is there a convention on this? I just think that a lot of people will be confused by the use of Bombay and Mumbai or Calcutta and Kolkata to refer to the same place. And thoughts? - 81.109.184.63 15:16, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: First instance of the term use: Mumbai (Bombay). After that use Mumbai. =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:20, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  English/Indian place names 

message: I think one of the things we can / should mention is the low fare charged to move a person thousands of kilometres, on the different classes. And a comparison with the cost of rail travel in other countries. what say?
:Low fare to move persons? Well, 'subsidised fare' captures the topic. If the railways were not a public sector unit, I dont think the fares would be so low. =Nichalp «Talk»= 17:33, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cost to transport 

message: If this article is about the company Indian Railways, should the description of Delhi Metro be included? deeptrivia (talk) 02:08, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There's only a line on the Delhi Metro. =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:43, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scope 

message: Does anyone else see a solid blue square instead of the expected schematic diagram? The 250px thumbnail looks broken, though sizes at 247px and 251px seem to work. Should I change the size slightly or can we flush the thumbnail cache? ----Geoffrey 02:46, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Broken thumbnail 

message: We need to check if some records still hold in the light of Qingzang railway. -- Sundar \talk \contribs 05:33, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need to verify records 

message: The details of the compartment is wrongly mentioned...
An AC 2 Tier coach consists of 8 compartments with 6 berths thus totalling 48 Berths
An AC 3 Tier coach consists of 8 compartments with 8 berths thus totalling 64 Berths
:It's too specific to be added here. I'm removing. =Nichalp «Talk»= 12:52, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This article is about the company. =Nichalp «Talk»= 16:55, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Should be more appropriate at Rail transport in India -- PlaneMad|YakYak 17:17, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Compartment description