If anyone but an engineer or an expert says it, most people will not believe and by the same token, not many know that the steel tracks of a railway line expand during the summer and contract during the winter.
Yes, its true that at the joints, where each 36-metre long section of rail is welded with the other, there is a noticeable expansion, creating a gap, miniscule though it may be.
“Whatever is there in the rule book, we carry it out to the ‘T’ and there is no cause for alarm. There is never a let-down and at any given point of time, between 5,000 to 6,000 personnel are constantly at work, monitoring the tracks with a critical eye across the South Central Railway (SCR),” assures General Manager Ravindra Gupta, when contacted.
Asked what was the extreme that happens due to the heat and Mr. Gupta replies that it is a condition called buckling when two sections of rail do not fit exactly as they should. “When buckling happens, rarely though, I need to close traffic on both sides and put the two rails back together and this can sometimes take a few hours. We are constantly on watch to such situations,” he said.
‘Rail temperature’
This happens typically in peak summer months when the rail surface temperature or ‘rail temperature’ as it is called goes up to 70 degrees Celsius in North India, because of their prolonged exposure to the sun’s direct rays, even while the ambient day temperatures could hover between 45 and 50 degrees C, according to Principal Chief Engineer S.N. Singh. He added that temperatures in South India however, would be a lot lesser. “We have clear guidelines to keep the rails, especially the Long Welded Rail (LWR) territory de-stressed, and we take the maximum and minimum temperatures of the past 50 years into consideration. We get daily reports of track maintenance. We are fully geared up to meet the summer’s requirements. We arrest the gap using ballast, sleeper-fasteners and other established maintenance systems,” Mr. Singh said. The general norm is that there is one person keeping a close watch on about two km of the track during his shift.
