Tamil Nadu - Chennai   

They help to keep the trains on track at work

PHOTO: Vidya Venkat

Increase in train services means more work for RTCs these days.—

CHENNAI: Working out of a few cramped rooms on the first floor of the Divisional Railway Office in Park Town, 57 Rail Traffic Controllers (RTCs) direct more than thousand trains linking Chennai with its neighbouring districts every day .

They coordinate the running of trains with other railway staff working in four six-hour shifts. Chief Controller, P. Jeyachandran calls the job “an endless relay race”.

“We plan the running of tomorrow’s trains today,” he says, pointing to a time-and-distance graph on which rail routes have been plotted in coloured lines.

The graph shows the origin, destination and halting points to ensure that trains reached on time.

“But often things don’t turn out as planned.”

R. Bhoopathy, Controller of train punctuality, says trains usually run late for reasons beyond their control. Cattle lounging on the tracks, people getting run over and miscreants pulling the brake chain for fun complicate the work as one train after the other gets stuck. “And it is not as if you can re-route trains since they run on fixed lines,” he says.

The rail traffic control room is in a state of perennial hyperactivity. Controllers remain glued to their seats, constantly referring to the dizzying lines that criss-cross the graph appearing on computer screens.

Endless queries pouring out of the speaker on the panel create a din, broken only by the shrill beep of the DTMF office communication equipment through which they shout instructions to station masters, linemen, announcers, guards and others.

With no instruction manual to follow, RTCs have only their presence of mind to depend on. The job calls for quick decision making, high levels of concentration and prompt responses.

“We regulate four to five trains at a time,” says Nandakumar, an RTC. Regulation involves remembering everything including which train should be running at what speed, which should be stopped, where and for how long and keeping the drivers of trains constantly updated on the positions of ones before it.

The work also requires ensuring other railway staff are doing their jobs right. For instance, before a train starts, RTCs have to make sure the driver has taken his mandatory 16 hours rest. They also have to arrange for emergency services such as medical vans in the event of accidents, repair work in case of derailments and allocate damaged blocks of tracks for maintenance .

In tense situations such as those after an accident, they get into action “like a drill”. They must shoot the right questions to the staff on the site. “In one such incident, a share autorickshaw got dragged by a train and the controller had to assess the casualty. All that the nervous guard at the site could tell was there were broken hands, legs and torsos scattered all over …” says Neenu Ittyerah, Chief Public Relations Officer, Southern Railway.

The increase in the number of train services over the years has also meant more work for the RTCs. A senior railway official said the staff strength at the Control has remained unchanged for the past 30 years, though train services have doubled in the past 10 years alone. A single controller continues to handle the Chennai-Gudur section, on which the goods services have gone up from 60 to 120 .

Similarly, with the launch of the MRTS services, a controller, already handling 156 services between Tambaram and Chennai Beach, has to now manage 124 more trains.

Controllers remain so absorbed in their work that they have little idea what is happening in the world outside.

Recalling the fire that broke out on the seventh floor of the office last year, Jeyachandran says: “We were the last ones to be evacuated as we sat here blissfully unaware.”

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