Five CLW locos join railway fleet, crew-friendly cab launched

Five new locomotives joined the Indian railways fleet this week, thanks to V N Mathur, member in charge of traffic an ex-officio secretary of the government of India and Railway Board, whoc visited the Chittaranjan Locomotive Works (CLW) to flag them off.

Mathur was accompanied by V Shanker, general manager of CLW, during the inspection of various shops of CLW.

Mathur flagged off five CLW built locomotives.

The first loco was the first crew friendly WAG-7 locomotive with 5000 horse-power (HP) bearing the number 27895 with special features for the safety and accessibility of the driver .

This type of locomotive was the freight workhorse of the Indian Railways at present .

The second locomotive was conventional passenger loco of WAP-4 type with 5000HP capacity.

The third was the latest 3-phase technology passenger loco of the WAP-5 series of 5300HP capacity, also incidentally the only loco to have CRS sanction indicating a speed potential of 200kmph .

The fourth one was the WAP-7 passenger type of 3-phase technology having 6000HP capacity, of the type currently hauling the country's fastest Rajdhani Express trains .

Mathur also flagged off one conventional type freight workhorse of the WAG-7 type.

During the shop visit, he inaugurated one CNC cylindrical axle grinding machine in the wheel assembly shop.

This machine was procured at a cost of Rs 1.30 crore.

Mathur congratulated the CLW team for producing the crew friendly loco as recommended by RSRC.

Mathur later addressed a press conference along with Shanker.

Mathur spent quite some time in the newly-opened 'CLW loco park' where CLW built locomotives were kept for display to the public especially from steam and electric era.

Mathur also held detailed discussions with senior officers of CLW and heard the various staff representatives as well.

An ISO 9001:2000 audit team from IRQS, headed by S N Mishra also visited CLW between September 13 and September 15 with audit team members S Basu and J N Dutta.

The team inspected the workshop, township and other establishments in CLW for audit of infrastructure and records for the ISO 9001:2000 certification renewal.

The team was accompanied by P Pradhan, CEE for development and management representative (MR) for ISO related items and A Kullu, dy-CME for ELB & dy-MR.

The team also met A K Tiwari, CME of CLW, and R K Bansal, CEE, with senior officers.

The IRQS audit team visit was to inspect management action being taken for achievement of quality objectives following quality system ISO 9001:2000 and thus confirming the validity of ISO 9001:2000 certification for the next year.

Interestingly, CLW recently exercised its own form of democracy by holding election for new street members of area committees in CLW township with polling and counting of votes done under observation of nominated observers.

Chittaranjan township was divided into eight areas with total 94 street members, of which 23 won un-contested while rest 71 street members were elected from 186 candidates in a process under a process managed by election officer and chief warden R K Bansal, CEE of CLW.

All residents including Shanker, GM of CLW, voted.

Street members of area committees would have to work with the CLW administration and would also elect vice""wardens, one for each area, to form the ex-officio body that was like a panchayat system to mange socio-cultural and recreational needs of the CLW township and its residents.