Monday, August 10, 2009

High reach pantograph: world record set by Stone India

   KOLKATA, India  -- The new generation pantograph developed by Stone India for the Indian Railways allows an increase in the highest of the overhead wires (catenary height) from the standard 6 meters to 7.5 meters-setting the world record for the High Reach pantograph for highest catenary for electric locomotives .

 Such a device is suitable for locomotives to be used for running double-stack containers as envisaged in the upcoming dedicated freight corridors being implemented by Indian Railways. ( enlarge photo )

   This will also enable Indian Railways to introduce double-decker passenger trains in high density suburban passenger route. The pantographs have already been commissioned successfully after extensive test by Indian Railways.   

Stone India 's innovation makes Indian Railway achieve this unprecedented feat to become the only railway in the world to run a train under a 7.5 meter-high contact wire.

   The new-design world record pantograph , developed completely in-house, has many other added features, such as twin catenary height of 6 & 7.5 meters, auto upward-force adjustment to improve effective current collection in adverse conditions, thereby enabling reduction in energy consumption and allowing trains to run at much higher speeds.

    The new design overcomes the traditional challenge of balancing a high-reach pantograph in double-stack container trains moving at a high speed in adverse wind conditions, hitherto faced by all global suppliers of pantographs.

Stone India Ltd has not only successfully designed and developed the improved pantograph in a record time but did it completely indigenously using its own expertise and with its own R&D setup using cutting edge simulation tools.
    The patented new series named as "Omniversal Intelipanto" has been supplied when other multinational companies failed to do so before commencement of the trial by Indian Railway in East Coast Railways which was witnessed by Japanese technical delegation.

     The success of this design will not only help saving foreign currency but will benefit Indian Railways by enabling locomotives to run on electricity instead of costly diesel. Additionally this opens up the possibility of Indian Railways even running double-decker passenger trains in high density passenger routes through further increase of catenary height.

    The Company plans to adopt this design in all its pantograph and plans to export such world record pantographs to countries, which propose to use electric traction for running double-stack container trains as well as double-decker passenger trains.

Stone India Ltd , a Kolkata based company, which has been serving Indian Railways for more than 77 years has pioneered the introduction of several systems to Indian Railways, including pantographs, used by the electric locomotives and EMUs. So far all these introductions have been through technical collaborations with overseas companies.

   This marks the beginning of Stone India's major self-initiative & achievement to arrive at breakthrough innovative solutions for customers, which are generally fraught with skepticism of unachievable goals.

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Monday, August 10, 2009