Counting wagons

Despite an electronic system of tracking wagons, their number cannot be declared with certainty by Indian Railways

In those days, in the early 1970s, I was an undergraduate student in Kolkata. My father got transferred to Delhi. I suspect the imagery of a firearm is inappropriate. Nevertheless, lock, stock and barrel, the family had to move from Kolkata to Delhi. Perhaps trucks weren’t the preferred mode then. One needed to get a wagon from the Indian Railways (IR). Nor were those days when you did everything online through the IR’s freight operations information system (FOIS). But you could apply for single wagons then, though as with every period of shortage, wagons were impossible to get. (People will argue there is a shortage of wagons even today.) A shortage results in higher prices or rationing.  The former wasn’t permissible, the latter wasn’t transparent. Therefore, despite working for the government, my father couldn’t get a wagon. There was providential help in the form of a classmate whose father was with the Indian Railway Accounts Service. My friend and I turned up at his dad’s office in Fairlie Place and were suitably impressed. After all, Eastern Railway (its predecessor, East Indian Railway) has been there since 1879 and William Fairlie (Scottish merchant and sheriff of Kolkata in 1808) has walked in that building (it was actually renovated in 1879) in the late 18th century. Truth be told, we were even more impressed with a piece of paper that was an entitlement certificate to a wagon. It was one of those wagons where household goods were loaded at one end and the car (an Ambassador) at the other.  

At the time of loading, the car had to be tethered to the wagon with sturdy ropes and the petrol tank virtually emptied of petrol. “Tell your father to track the wagon in Mughal Sarai,” was the grave advice of my friend’s father. “If it gets lost in Mughal Sarai, it will never be found.” Since I had managed to get an entitlement certificate to a wagon, I went up in my father’s esteem and he nodded sagely at this valuable piece of advice. How he managed to keep tabs on a wagon in Mughal Sarai, if at all, I have no idea. Tabs or no tabs, IR is probably unnecessary maligned. Like the postal department, everything reaches the destination, in due course, in the fullness of time. 

FOIS is actually relatively new. Modernisation of freight operations started in 1985, but only on paper. A proper electronic tracking of wagons started in 1999. A new system for numbering wagons started in 2003, with 11 digits. “The first two digits will indicate ‘type of wagon’. The next two digits will indicate ‘owning railway’. The next two digits will indicate ‘year of manufacture’. The next four digits will indicate ‘individual wagon number’ and the last digit will be a ‘check digit’.” 

CARRIAGE CONCERN Modernisation of freight operations started in 1985, but only on paper. A proper electronic tracking of wagons started in 1999.

Despite this, there was a problem with the electronic tracking introduced between 1999 and 2004. Wagon numbers weren’t automatically captured, but had to be manually entered by operators.

Abraham Jacob retired from the Indian Railway Traffic Service and has recently published a book titled The Story of the Indian Railways, Up and Down the Staircase. That book has a chapter on counting wagons. “A very humorous traffic officer used to say that if one went to meet a traffic officer, he would only be in one of three states; he would invariably be counting wagons, going to start counting wagons or had just finished his first round of counting wagons... Indian Railways before the days of Gujral (Railway Board chairman, 1980-83) was a wagon-oriented system, which meant that all stations were opened for goods booking and the unit of booking was a wagon… Consequently, once the wagon had been loaded it had to be collected and brought into a yard, where the wagons were sorted out to form direction-wise and yard-wise trains… The early seventies were also a period of compounding complications. The Railways had started introducing eight-wheeler wagons with centre buffer couplings. When these wagons were to be inducted, it was done with the clear commitment that they would run as rakes and would be dealt with distinctly from all other four-wheeler wagons… The eight-wheelers which were to run as rakes quickly got disintegrated into the general pool of wagons… All this called for more and more refined number taking and wagon counting.”

With apologies to William Hogarth, many IR problems can be described as those of a rake’s non-progress. The shortage syndrome meant you couldn’t have rakes and therefore, coaches and wagons had to be rustled up to form trains. The coupling issue is a fallout of this. By the way, how many wagons does IR possess? In the early 1970s, there were around 350,000. In 2007-08, there were around 440,000. In 2008-09, there were 186,000. In 2015-16, there were 220,000.  These numbers don’t sound right such as the dip in 2008. The reason is statistical. There used to be four-wheeler wagons. Initial eight-wheelers were treated as equivalent to two four-wheeler units (FWU). Better eight-wheelers, introduced in the 1980s, started to be treated as equivalent to 2.5 FWUs.  Some wagons owned by others (such as CONCOR) also use IR tracks. But IR ownership proper will be 220,000 or thereabouts. That’s the figure you will come across. However, I am not convinced conversions through FWUs are done in a transparent and objective way.  In any event, with few four-wheelers, perhaps one should have new units.  Start counting wagons again.

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The author is chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. Views are personal