The Indian Railways (IR) has invited bids for setting up a plant with an assured offtake of around 80,000 forged wheels per year and announced that manufacturing was expected to start within the next 18 months.

Once India achieves high standards of manufacturing of wheels, it would export them mostly to European countries. It has caused some excitement among prospective bidders and railway watchers.

This ambitious plan, however, seems misplaced.

Wheels were in news recently because their non-availability at the Integral Coach Factory, Chennai, was likely to delay the turn-out of the much-awaited third rake of Train 18/Vande Bharat train.

These trains are in focus after the Prime Minister talked of 75 such trains in 75 weeks on August 15, 2021. With the progress of even the third rake being slow, its wheels, which were ordered from an Ukraine company and the first lot was stuck in the war zone, became a bone of contention.

Subsequently, the wheels were received in May and the train was turned out in August.

India’s reliance on import of wheels has raised eyebrows. The criticism of IR for not manufacturing enough wheels became louder when it recently ordered 47,000 sets of wheels from a Chinese company.

Railroad wheels are either cast or roll-forged, with a prevailing engineering view that the metallurgy of forged wheels is more suited for trains. In reality, it is about the legacy of development of railroad wheels; while the manufacturers in the US adopted cast wheels, those in Europe and Japan developed forged wheels and it has been more about commercial pitching by companies.

Since the US did not have a vibrant system of passenger trains, railways worldwide employ forged wheels.

India began its manufacture of wheels decades back with Durgapur Steel Plant (DSP) developing forged wheels for locomotives and coaches and Rail Wheel Factory, Bangalore (RWF), starting with cast wheels for freight wagons.

Another Rail Wheel Plant (RWP) was set up in Bihar when the demand for cast freight wheels increased. While freight wheels are manufactured by RWP, RWF makes them and also wheels for old ICF and EMU coaches.

DSP did well in supplying forged wheels, but beset as it is with PSU bureaucracy and limited R&D resources, it could not deliver wheels in large numbers for newer LHB coaches and EMD/ABB locomotives and, therefore, a large number of such wheels are being imported for decades.

Wrapped in red tape

RWF developed cast wheels for LHB coaches. But there is no evidence of use of cast wheels in passenger trains in the speed range of 120 km/hr or above. In spite of computer simulations of cast wheels on LHB, albeit limited at 110 km/hr, the Railways heistated to try them out at higher speeds. RWF did push for it strongly but the IR bureaucracy baulked at it.

So, import of forged wheels continues, with the numbers going up as the production of such coaches has been increasing.

RWF has supplied more than 4 million wheels and barring one or two cases, not one has failed whereas breakage of forged wheels is not uncommon. This is multiple times six sigma.

Nevertheless, it is foolhardy to now expect the IR to be bold enough to introduce cast wheels in faster passenger trains. The IR had entered into an agreement with Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL) in 2013 to set up a forged wheel plant at Rae Bareli to manufacture one lakh wheels per year for curbing imports.

After years of delays, the plant is ready but barring a supply of some hundreds of trial wheels, its full-scale operation is delayed, partly due to bureaucracy and partly due to the pandemic.

A plant set up with an investment of nearly ₹2,000 crore lies idle while the IR continues to import wheels.

ICF needed only a small number of 256 wheels for the first two Train18s. DSP was not capable of engineering and manufacturing them to the stiff timeline and so ICF had to import the wheels.

With the RINL plant not operational and DSP not able to meet even the existing requirements, wheels had to be imported for the next 44 Vande Bharat trains as well.

What is, however, curious is that the order was placed with a Chinese company, even after the government imposed restrictions on sourcing from Chinese firms.

The enhanced level of production of rolling stock alone in the country does not justify this bid to set up another plant.

Instead, the government must have the Ministries of Railways and Steel work together to get the RINL plant going in full steam.

Moreover, the IR engineers should make bold to try out cast wheels in high-speed passenger coaches, albeit after validation. If these synergies work, neither import of wheels nor the latest tender would be necessary.

The writer is retired General Manager/Indian Railways

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