Maligaon, June 10: As a prime focus for safer movements of trains, Northeast Frontier Railway has been focusing on detecting hot axle failures enroute. For that, Hot Box Detectors (HBD) are installedstrategically at the end of platform side of stations, where rolling in & rolling out examination of trains are done.
These sensor basedHBD will detect incidences of hot axle in the running trains and alert the railway staff to take preventive measures. Due to continuous movement of wheels of the coaches and wagons, ball bearing sometimes fails, which leads to increase in the temperature of axles.
This is known as hot axle. There are different causes for the incidence of hot axle, which includes overloading, faulty condition of bearings and other causes.
During the year2020-21, 07 cases, 2021-22, 09 cases, 2022-23, 14 cases and 2023-24 a single case of hot axle has been detected on freight trains by the sensor based HBD’s.
There are 16 no’s of Hot Box Detectors are installed across some important stations over N. F. Railway. These stations include Kamakhya (02 no’s), Guwahati (04 no’s), New Bongaigaon (01 no), Rangapara North (01 no), New Jalpaiguri (04 no’s) and Katihar (04 no’s).
As hot axle is a major concern in the railway safety, N. F. Railway is undertaking vigorous measures, including counselling of railway staffs and inter departmental co-ordination on safety standards to prevent punctuality loss in train operations besides safety.
