Indian Railways: Insight of Trainee Officer's(Probationer's) life

Today was the day for field visit for a ghat section. Lonavala - Karjet section of Central Railway was chosen for the day. We started at 9 AM in the morning from IRICEN (Indian Railway Institute of Civil Engineering). IRICEN is one the Central Training Institutes meant for Civil Engineers.Such a field visit is a full-scale event for the organisers, starting right from Bus, assistants to favourite food of the probationers, lemon water and what not. We reached Khandala at 12 PM.

As soon as we reached Khandala Station, we met ASM (Assistant Station Manager) of the station. One of the duties of ASM of any station is to coordinate with Engineering Department and facilitate easy movement of trains. Khandala station is somewhat special on Indian Railways as it has to facilitate and manage the train traffic on the route having one of the steepest gradients. For the readers having an interest in Indian Railways working, I would like to share more information regarding it.
All the distances on IR are measured with respect to the Zonal Headquarter. Khandala (124KM from CST) is situated between Lonavla station(127.76km from CST) and Monkey Hill Station (118.89).

The slope between Lonavla and Khandala stations is around 1in 200. This makes the normal working of the traffic very difficult. Sometimes, trains having inoperative brakes may come in this section. If such thing happens and a train is travelling from the uphill side, it will climb down the ghat section with unrestricted speed and most probably get derail somewhere. Hence to prevent this, a 'Catch siding' is provided at Khandala station.

Catch siding for trains climbing down

A train has to travel in design speed from Lonavla to Khandala section and stop at Khandala section for 2 minutes. I the train fails to stop at desired point (due to drivers unawareness or failure of braking system), the train will automatically be sent to a 'Catch Siding' where the train has to climb upward gradient so that it get halted owing to gravity. Similarly, if the train climbing  upwards from Monkey Hill Station to Khandala there is an arrangement called 'Slip Siding' in place.

Slip siding provided for trains climbing upwards.

As a gradient is high, stresses in the couplings between the bogies are also very high. Due to these high stresses, the train may get parted on the upgradient while climbing from Monkey Hill to Khandala Station. If such incident takes place, the parted portion of the train will travel downward and may collide with the upcoming train which is very serious. Hence, the 'Slip Siding' is provided at such a location that this parted porting of the train may safely and automatically be taken to the location where it may not interfere with the traffic.
Having a chance to visit such places is the most interesting thing I find in my training. During my training as an IRSE probationer, I would get ample amount of chances to travel across the length and breadth of India. I joined Indian Railways as IRSE officer on 21st December 2015. since I have travelled approximately 4200Km across India. I visited places like Jabalpur, Kota, Bundi, Bhopal and many other which I would not have visited otherwise.
As I said, my training started on 21st December 2015 at IRICEN, Pune. From 21st to 23rd December, we were introduced to different basic aspects of Indian Railways. Thereafter half the batch was sent to NAIR, Vadodara for Foundation Course and remaining half (including me) was sent for field training. For field training, a group of 4-5 probationers were made and sent to different zones of Indian Railways. The period of field training was 28th December 2015 to 16th Jan 2016, thereafter which we were supposed to come back to IRICEN, Pune for Phase 1 course. Our group was sent to West Central Zone of IR (WCR).
On the morning of 30th December, we reached Jabalpur, which is the zonal headquarters of WCR. Until afternoon, all the formalities were completed and we were told to reach Kota, Rajasthan by next morning. As we were free that evening, we decided to visit Bhedaghat and Dhuvadhar waterfall.
Here are the stunning pictures of Bhedaghat. Here the River Narmada traverses through beds of marble rock along with awful commentary by the boatman.

 Until we reached back our rest house at Jabalpur, our tickets for Kota, Rajasthan was confirmed and we were ready to go. We reached Kota, DRM office on the morning of 31st of December. As there was no training scheduled on 31st, we were invited to the New year party at Railway Officers Club Kota, by our training imparting officer there. After a few days of training, during weekends we visited Bundi fort, 40Km away from Kota.
Here are some pictures from Bundi, Rajasthan

Raja ki Baori (A kind of well)

Rani ki Baori

Commode of the King!

23 Spears

Diwan-E-Aam

Sinhasan

Next day we visited Central Garden of Kota, where models of Seven Wonders of the World are created.

After training at Kota, we were sent to Bhopal, MP for the same. There we visited different construction sites under Bhopal Division located at Guna. There we visited Sanchi Stupa

One fine day we had a chance to travel with the Loco-Pilot

After completing the field training, we all returned to IRICEN, Pune to attain hell number of lectures every day. Since then, almost every day we are taught a new subject related to Rail technology and give exams based on it.