ELECTRIC TRACTION – PART – 01 - BRIEF HISTORY OF INDIAN RAILWAYS, IMPORTANT TERMS AND MECHANISM OF TRAIN MOVEMENT

BRIEF HISTORY OF INDIAN RAILWAYS

There were Indian merchants, both in Calcutta and Bombay who took an interest in founding of the railways.

The most prominent of these was a remarkable Bengali merchant Prince DWARKANATH TAGORE, GRANDFATHER OF NOBEL LAUREATE POET RABINDRANATH TAGORE.

Dwarkanath's firm Carr, Tagore & Company, is reported to have offered in 1844, to raise one-third of the capital required for a railway from Calcutta northwest to the coalfields above Burdwan.

The Railway Age dawned in India on 16th. April 1853, when the first train ran from Bombay to Thana, a distance of 21 miles (33.81 Km.)

The first proposals for construction of railways in India were presented in 1844 to East India Company in London by two companies

(i) East Indian Railway Company headed by R.McDonald Stephenson, and

(ii) Great Indian Peninsula Railway Company.

Both East Indian Railway Company and Great Indian Peninsula Railway Company were incorporated in England for the purpose of constructing railway lines in Calcutta and Bombay presidencies respectively.

Though Great Indian Peninsula Railway Company was formed in 1844.

George Stephenson could not see his Locomotives run on Indian soil as he died in 1848.   

Stephenson was a pioneering railway engineer and inventor of the 'Rocket', the most famous early railway locomotive.

INVENTOR OF LOCOMOTIVE - GEORGE STEPHENSON

George Stephenson was born on 9 June 1781 in England. His father was an engine-man at a coalmine.

Stephenson himself worked at the mine and learned to read and write in his spare time.

In 1814, Stephenson constructed his first locomotive, 'Blucher', for hauling coal at Killingworth Colliery near Newcastle.
In 1815, he invented a safety lamp for use in coalmines, nicknamed the 'Geordie'.

In 1821, Stephenson was appointed engineer for the construction of the Stockton and Darlington railway.

It opened in 1825 and was the first public railway.

In October 1829, the railway's owners staged a competition at Rain hill to find the best kind of locomotive to pull heavy loads over long distances.

Thousands came to watch. Stephenson's locomotive 'Rocket' was the winner, achieving a record speed of 36 miles per hour.

Stephenson became engineer on a number of these projects and was also consulted on the development of railways in Belgium and Spain.

Stephenson died on 12 August 1848 in Chesterfield in Derbyshire.

His only son Robert was also a railway engineer and worked with his father on many of his projects.

TRACTION

The adhesive friction between a wheel and a surface, as between a driving wheel of a motor vehicle and the road

TRACTION IN MEDICAL SCIENCE

A way of treating broken bones in which a device gently pulls the bones back into place.

ELECTRIC TRACTION

It means locomotion (the power or ability to move) in which the driving or tractive force is obtained from electric motors.

ADHESIVE

A substance that unites or bonds surfaces together.

FRICTION

A force that resists the relative motion or tendency to such motion of two bodies or substances in contact.

ADHESIVE FRICTION

The friction between a body and the surface on which it moves (as between an automobile tire and the road)

FORCE

A force is a push or pull acting upon an object as a result of its interaction with another object. There are different types of forces.

A force is a vector quantity.

TRACTIVE FORCE

Tractive force is the force used to generate motion between a body and a tangential surface, through the use of DRY FRICTION, though the use of SHEAR FORCE of the surface is also commonly used.

DRY FRICTION

Dry friction resists relative lateral motion of two solid surfaces in contact. Dry friction is subdivided into static friction ("stiction") between non-moving surfaces, and kinetic friction between moving surfaces.

SHEARING FORCES

Shearing forces are unaligned forces pushing one part of a body in one direction, and another part of the body in the opposite direction. When the forces are aligned into each other, they are called compression forces.