The Central Workshops, situated in Ponmalai (Golden Rock), Tiruchirapalli

Tiruchirapalli

Tiruchirappalli ) , also called Tiruchi or Trichy , is a city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and the administrative headquarters of Tiruchirappalli District. It is the fourth largest municipal corporation in Tamil Nadu and also the fourth largest urban agglomeration in the state...

 in the India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

n state

Indian States

The term Indian states can refer to:*The States and territories of India*The nominally sovereign princely states that existed under the British Raj before India became independent in 1947....

 of Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Pondicherry, and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh...

, is one of the three mechanical railway workshops serving the southern zone of the Indian Railways

Indian Railways

Indian Railways , abbreviated as IR , is a departmental undertaking of Government of India, which owns and operates most of India's rail transport. It is overseen by the Ministry of Railways of the Government of India....

.

It is officially called as Central Workshop, Thiruchchirappalli or 'GOC'. In common it is called as Golden Rock Workshop, (Ponmalai in Tamil).

This repair workshop is basically a "Mechanical Workshop" which comes under the control of the Mechanical Department of the Indian Railways. The other two mechanical workshops of Southern Railway are located in Perambur, Chennai. They are "Carriage Works, Perambur" and "Loco Works, Perambur".

(Note: The Integral Coach Factory, Perambur is a production unit and is classified as a factory and not as a workshop. The primary objectives of a Railway Workshop is repair and maintenance work and not production. However, due to changing requirements, many workshops, including Central Workshops of Goldenrock, are used nowadays for regular production activities)

History

This central workshop was set up in 1897 by South Indian Railways at Nagapattinam mainly to cater to the requirement of steam locomotive maintenance. South Indian Railways decided to shift the workshop to Tiruchinapoly, presently known as Tiruchchirappalli, owing to its locational advantage. Consequently foundation stone was laid by Mrs. R.P. MUNRO on 20.10.1926. It was shifted to Tiruchchirappalli in 1928 because of its strategic location. The Central Workshop, Goldenrock is functioning at Tiruchchirappalli since then.

The total area of this workshop is around 200 acre (0.809372 km²), out of which 26 acres (105,218.4 m²) is covered under roof. At present 6091 employees are working in this workshop. This workshop is primarily engaged in the activities of DSL Loco POH, heritage steam locomotive POH, coaching stock maintenance and wagon manufacturing and other sundry activities.

This workshop does have a long traverser way around 600 metres long and 80 feet (24.4 m) wide. This workshop was involved in repairing of Royal Air Force's air planes during world war II.

This workshop when built had state of the art facilities rarely seen in those days. It had its own powerhouse which generated electricity for the workshop and the colony. In fact, Railway colony, Golden Rock was one of the first places to be lit by electrical lights in Tiruchirappalli city those days.

Organization structure

• CWM: Goldenrock Railway Workshop is headed by one Sr. Administrative Grade Officer, designated as Chief Workshop Manager (CWM). He is the overall in-charge for complete activities. He is assisted by five Junior Administrative Officers, seven Sr. Scale Officers and 18 Junior Scale Officers. (Incumbent Officer : Sri. D. Shunmuganandam)

• Dy. CME/X class: Deputy Chief Mechanical Engineer/X -class is responsible for POH / conversion of X class locomotives. In view of the UNESCO's world heritage site status given to the Nilgiri Mountain Railway Nilgiri Mountain Railway
  Nilgiri Mountain Railway
  The Nilgiri Mountain Railway is a railway in Tamil Nadu, India, built by the British in 1908, and was initially operated by the Madras Railway Company. The railway still relies on its fleet of steam locomotives. NMR comes under the jurisdiction of the newly formed Salem Division...
  
  , maintaining and augmenting the rolling stock for this railway has gained significance. The Golden rock workshops has been entrusted with the responsibility of carrying out the POH of X class locomotives (special locomotives which have a toothed cog which engages with the racks available in the railway track in very steep gradients)and manufacturing of new locomotives. At the time of POH, the original coal fired boiler of the loco is converted in to oil fired loco with out altering the external looks to preserve the heritage value. The conversion has become necessary in view of the logistics, economy and availability of coal for the loco. At present the workshop has also bagged the order for manufacturing 4 numbers of X class locomotives. In view of the international importance of this railway, the senior most JAG officer of the workshop has been entrusted with the responsibility of this activity (Incumbent Officer: Sri. P. Ravindra Babu)

• Dy. CME/DSL: Deputy Chief Mechanical Engineer/Diesel is overall in-charge for complete Periodical Overhauling (POH) activities of diesel locomotives and its allied shops viz. EBR, CLP, CMS & HERS. He is also looking after activities related to export locomotives, overhauling of Public Sector Locomotives and steam locomotives. He is assisted by one Sr. Scale and three Junior Scale Officers. (Incumbent Officer: Sri. D. Ramachandran)

• Dy. CME/P: Deputy Chief Mechanical Engineer/Production is overall in-charge Production Shops viz Wheel Shop, Fabrication and Smithy Shop, Machine Shop, Foundry and DSL Component Shop. He is also looking after Production, Planning and Control Organization. He has been appointed as Management Representative for International Quality and Environmental Management Systems (ISO 9001 & ISO 14001). He is assisted by one Sr. Scale Officer and two Junior Scale Officers. (Incumbent Officer: Sri. G. Chandrasekaran)

• Dy. CME/Carriage & Wagon: Deputy Chief Mechanical Engineer/Carriage and Wagon is overall in-charge for periodical overhauling of Carriages and manufacture of wagons. He is assisted by one Sr. Scale and two Jr. Scale Officers. (Incumbent Officer: Sri. D. Jayaraman)

• Dy.CEE/S: Deputy Chief Electrical Engineer is in-charge for maintenance of all the Electrical equipments and machineries available in the shop. He is also looking after the Train Lighting activities. He is assisted by two Junior Scale Officers. (Incumbent Officer: Sri. R.V.Swaminathan)

• Dy.CMM: Deputy Chief Material Manager is overall in-charge for procurement of raw material and spare parts, stocking and issuing activities. He is assisted by one Sr. Scale and three Jr. Scale Officers.(Incumbent Officer: Post vacant)

• Sr.AFA: Senior Accounts and Financial Advisor is a Sr. Scale Officer looking after Accounts and Finance aspects of GOC Shop. He is assisted by two Jr. Scale Officers.(Shri. S. Sundararajan)

• WPO: Workshop Personnel Officer is also a Sr. Scale Officer looking after recruitment, promotion, transfer, retirement and welfare measures. He maintains industrial relationship with trade unions also. He is assisted by one Jr. Scale Officer. (Shri. T.R. Raghavendran)

Diesel locomotive Maintenance

Diesel Electric Loco periodical overhauling (POH) started in Goldenrock Shop in the Year 1969, to cater to the requirements of SR and SCR. It started with a capacity of 0.5 Loco/Month. The capacity was stepped up to 10 locos per month from July 1990 onwards to meet the needs of 5 Railways i.e. Southern Railway, South Central Railway, South Western Railway, West Central Railway and North Western Railway. Presently, Shop is capable of overhauling 12 locomotives per month.

In addition to the Locomotives overhauling, Diesel Shop is attached with the following Support shops.

1. Engine Block Reclamation Shop
2. Cylinder Liner Plating Shop
3. Coil Manufacturing Shop
4. Heavy Electrical Repair Shop

Carriage Maintenance

GOC Shop is undertaking the following major activities in carriage maintenance.

• Overhauling of BG AC and Non AC coaches,
• Coaches of Nilgiri Mountain Railways,
• Refurbishing of interior furnishing under midlife rehabilitation,
• Conversion and construction of ART coaches,
• Rehabilitation of in-service MG coaches for exports etc.
• Furnishing of inspection cars
• Retro fitment of stainless steel trough floor
• Refurbishing of toilet
• Implementation of POH periodicity from 12 months to 18 months

Apart from normal overhauling, GOC Shop had established its expertise in the following areas:

1. Conversion / construction of coaches for Nilgiri Mountain Railways.

2. Export of old MG coaches to other nations after Maintenance & Re-Modeling by RIETS Limited .

Wagon Manufacturing Activity

• GOC Shop started manufacturing wagons in the year 1962, since then it had rolled out 34901 wagons in 53 designs.

• Presently workshop is engaged in mass production of BOXNHL and BLC (container flat wagons for Container Corporation) wagons.

• During the five financial years GOC Workshop captured the majority of wagon building orders for total 2905 Wagons of Container Flat type worth Rs.610 crores from M/s. CONCOR/New Delhi of which GOC till date has manufactured 2770 BLC wagons worth Rs.575.6 Crores. Additionally in last five financial years GOC shops manufactured 830 BOXNHS wagons worth 127 crores. Further GOC shop have an order of 450 Nos. of BLC wagons costing Rs.157 crores.

• The GOC Workshop is gearing up for production of 1000 wagons per year from present level of 840 wagons under Modernisation project considering the huge Wagon demand by M/s. CONCOR and also Stainless steel wagons for Indian Railways

• GOC Workshop has become the first railway workshop in Indian Railways to implement and adopt new state of art technology fasteners as Lock Bolts (Huck/ Avdel) Bolts in place of conventional rivets and successfully turned out 240 High Speed BOXN wagons.

• GOC Workshop is awarded with new orders from Railway Board for manufacturing 600 Nos of BOXNHL wagon, which is a Stainless Steel wagon with High pay load (71 tonnes against 68 tonnes in normal wagons) designed to overcome the problems of corrosion, body bulging and weak stanchions in the existing wagons. The new design enables to an extra loading of 2.92 tonnes per wagon and 169tonnes per rake of 58 wagons which contributes an extra earning of Rs.5800 per wagon and Rs. 3.38 Lakhs per rake. GOC Shop has an order of 599 Nos. of BOXN HL Wagons costing Rs.187 Crores.

Production Wing

Production Wing of GOC focuses its attention mainly on manufacturing of components required for maintenance of locomotives and carriages and wagon manufacturing. It also take care of the requirement of various divisions by supplying wheels for rolling stock maintenance. Besides, Production wing has taken up the manufacturing of steam locomotives required for Nilgiri Mountain Railways and Darjeeling Himalayan Railways.

Production wing comprises the following shops:

Foundry Shop, DSL Component Shop, Machine Shop, Wheel Shop, Fabrication & Smithy Shop, Erecting Shop, Tool Room & Mechanical Mill Wright shop

Support Activities

Besides core business activities, GOC shop is equipped with the following support activities.

• Material management
• Electrical Plant Maintenance
• Mechanical Plant Maintenance
• Industrial Safety
• Basic Training Centre
• Information System

Material Management

Goldenrock Workshop is attached with 3 Stores Depots to stock and issue the materials, whenever it is needed for production.

Besides Stocking depot it is having a scrap store depot to dispose the scrap arising out of production and maintenance activity.

Stores depot takes all out efforts to ensure the availability of material always. The availability is used to be in the range of 95 to 98%. Besides of stocking and issuing of material, stores depot is always keen on system improvement. The following system improvements have been achieved in the recent past.

• Vital, safety, passenger amenity & must change items summary with covered / uncovered dues on line.
• Development of various exceptional reports to suit depot requirements based on MMIS module, like details of covered / uncovered dues in single line.
• Other depot stock in Group SPS. Incorporation of NS DBR by linking MMIS module.
• Computerized DBR label card with colour coding.
• Acceptance details of divisional DS8s & Surplus/inactive items list.
• Wastage of time in manual updating of data and taking print out is minimized.
• Monitoring of out of stock / 1 month / 3 months level on daily basis.
• Ready availability of required print out at the specific time.

Electrical Plant Maintenance

There is a dedicated team to maintain the electrical equipments and machineries available in GOC Shop. The main objectives of the Plant Maintenance Team is to reduce the down time of the machineries available in the shop.

Apart from maintaining the Electrical machineries, the team is also looking after electrical power distribution system and conservation measures, with close monitoring of electrical energy utilization, the shop had reduced the electrical energy from 81.12 Lakhs unit in the year 2007-08 to 75.58 Lakhs in the year 08-09. it had resulted in a financial savings of Rs.29.04 Lakhs in the year 2008-09.

MECHANICAL PLANT MAINTENANCE

Mechanical Plant maintenance is also termed as Mechanical Millwright. The Mechanical Millwright Shop takes care of the upkeeping of machineries and equipments. In addition to break down attention, it also pays preventive attention to critical machineries like Overhead Cranes, Material Handling Equipments and other special purpose machines.

Presently, around 1241 machineries are installed in the GOC Shop and are being regularly maintained by the Plant Maintenance Team.

Safety Cell

Safety Department at GOC Shop is functioning for the last 30 years for the goal of reducing accidents, injuries and hardship of the labours by improving the work methods and their knowledge in creating awareness in safe working methods. This approach was focused through systemic training, mock drills, shop floor counseling, data updating and scientific elimination of work related hazards, through display of posters, issue of safety magazines incorporating various safety procedures and catching an emotional rapport with audience through tailor made safety modules.

The Safety Department has bagged three State level Awards from Government of Tamil Nadu in three different fields for the year 2005.

Basic Training Centre

Shop is attached with a Training Centre mainly to cater to the requirement of Act Apprentice courses under Apprenticeship act 1961. This is a statutory in nature. The duration of the training varies from one year to four years depending on the entry level qualification and trade in which the apprentice is to be trained.

Apart from act apprenticeship the Training Centre also takes care of the need based training for the Artisans, Special supervisory skill training for supervisors.

Computer Centre

GOC Shop is equipped with a full fledged Information System required at Management, Operational level. It has developed the following packages.

• Workshop Information System (WISE) application software developed “in house” in 2001
• Implementation of WISE in GOC in 2002
• Assisted M/s. CRIS in WISE implementation @ other 16 Railway Workshops in 2004
• Unified Payroll developed & implemented in Oracle in 2006
• Diesel Loco Maintenance Management Information System (DLMMIS) for Loco sheds developed in Oracle
• Non Stock indent Generation and Monitoring developed & implemented in ORACLE

Premature Death Assistance Scheme

All the employees of GOC Shops (including Stores Department) are in the roll of PDA Scheme and a nominal amount of Rs.5/- from each employee is deducted from their salary towards this scheme. As a social security measure the family members of the deceased employee is given an assistance of Rs.10,000/- under this scheme. The employees who are in the roll of PDAS and retiring from service are presented with a Sonata Wrist Watch and an Executive Bag as a memento for safe keeping of Settlement and service related records.

Creche'

A Crèche is provided near the entrance of the Armoury Gate to take care of the infants / children of the women employees of this workshop and it is run by administration.

Workmen’s Canteen

A Modernized canteen with a provision of gas cooking is successfully functioning to cater to the requirements of the employees of GOC Shop. Food is cooked by steam in a very hygienic manner with good quality which has widely been appreciated by the employees. Refreshments such as Snacks / Special Tea / Coffee etc., are arranged and supplied to the employees in their work spot itself. The Canteen contains two dining halls with a capacity to accommodate 160 employees at a time for lunch. The dining halls are very neat and tidy and cleanliness is given top priority here. Around 350 meals are served daily. 9 Booths have been set up from which tea & snacks are sold.

Homeopathy clinic

A homeopathy clinic in Railway Colony is functioning to cater to the requirements of the Railway employees and their family members. The clinic is looked after by a Homeopathy Doctor who is paid from Staff Benefit Fund. Entire expenditure of this clinic is met from SBF.

Rail Kalyana Mandapam

Rail Kalyana Mandapam in GOC colony is catering to the requirements of the shop employees adequately. Necessary modification have been effected by providing false roofing and ceramic tiled floor for better utility and aesthetics. It is managed by a committee of representatives of the administration and recognized unions.

Railway Schools at Golden Rock

In GOC Railway colony area two railway schools are functioning as

1. High School/English Medium
2. Higher Secondary School/Tamil Medium

for catering to the educational needs of the children of the railway employees working in and around the Goldenrock. There are around 933 children of the railway employees studying in these schools.

Railway Mixed High School/English Medium/GOC

Total strength of students 710

No. of Teaching Staff 29

No. of Non-Teaching Staff 5

Railway Colony, Golden Rock

GOC Workshop has 3072 quarters. The entire colony is classified as ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’, ‘F’, ‘H’, ‘J’ & ‘G’ Type and Special Bungalow. Allotments are made as under:

A housing committee consisting of WPO & APO and members from the recognized unions and one member from the SC/ST Association monitors housing activities. This committee does the allotment of quarters to the eligible employees. Allotment of quarters on out-of-turn basis is not encouraged by the committee.

A colony committee of representatives of the administration and recognized unions is functioning. The Colony Committee meets periodically to review the requirement/ improvement in the colony. On the Official side it is represented by CWM, WPO, APO, ADEN.

Temples and Churches

The colony area has been provided with a temple and few large churches.