A first for Indian Railways: An all-women group for maintenance of railway coaches

The team will be working at Coaching Depot, Guwahati, North Frontier Railway.

According to Pranabjyoti Sarmah, CPRO, NF Rail, the group will be taking over the maintenance work after completion of the training on Thursday, on the occasion of the International Women's Day.

With the increase in number of trains from the Guwahati Station, under NF Railways, there was an increase in the maintenance needs of the incoming coaches in the pit line at Coach Maintenance Depot, Guwahati, the official release said.

The pit line is the maintenance facility in any Coach Maintenance Depot for the cleaning and maintenance work of the coaches once a train reaches its termination station.

The Depot has a coach holding of about 1300 and its activities are spread over Kamakhya, Paltan Bazaar and New Guwahati in Guwahati with a total of six pit lines and two sick-lines, and a staff of about 1,000, of whom 200 are women technicians.

The maintenance work at pit lines has predominantly been a male domain with work involved in all three shifts requiring the staff to go inside the dockpits for maintenance of undergear (consisting of wheels and brake system) items of the coaches.

Prior to this new initiative, the women were usually involved in ancillary maintenance works of the coaches related to curtains repair, indication boards painting, etc.

{image_3}Since the need for increasing maintenance capacity of the pit line at Guwahati has been on the rise, a project was taken up in February 2018 to develop a maintenance gang with only women staff.

Twenty women of Technician grade were selected in the Depot as a pilot group and they were given classroom training over the next few days to gain various concepts of maintenance involved in a train in pit lines.

After the theoretical training, the batch was given hands-on practical training at pit line with the existing technicians.