Upgrade Nearly 50-Year-Old French Concept
If you look inside the driver’s cabin of a train, you will
see the driver run around it to pull different brakes and reach out to the horn
as the train pulls inside a station. But, in the new layout of the train
drivers cabin designed by the students of National Institute of Design (NID), this
cumbersome process will soon see its end.
Lending their design skills to the service of Indian Railways, a team of three students
of NID, Prateek Upreti, Emil Alex and Mihir Laghate have redesigned the driver's
cabin of train engines. The design, which was an academic project attempts to give
the driver more breathing space and rearrange the control units to make them easily
accessible.
Alex explained that the current electric locomotive engines, WAT-4 of passenger
trains in the country were designed in France more than fifty years back and have
been around since 30 years Apart from the lack of comfort and crammed space, the
controls have been badly laid out. The driver has to get up from his seat to reach
out to the train brake meant for one particular direction and then move towards
that direction to pull the parking brake, said Alex.
With help from railway officials, the students travelled along with drivers in their
cabin between Ahmedabad and Vadodara to understand the issues and solutions. The
project took them 6 months of continuous interaction with the drivers to complete
their design. At the end of the project, the students have made a life-size prototype
of their design.
Talking about the changes they have made, Upreti said, we have divided the controls
in two sets - primary and secondary, according to their importance and frequency
of usage. The brakes have been placed next to each other while the driver’s seat
which used to block the passage is now collapsible under the main console.
The young designers are planning to approach the railway officials to give a presentation
of their design.
Courtesy: Times of India
