Indian Railways GP 140.. How i am going back in time....

Indian Railways imported 22 WAG 9 and 11 WAP 5 locomotives from M/s. ABB/ADTranz, Switzerland in 1997-98. Later on, CLW started manufacturing these locomotives and were subsequently indigenised through transfer of technology.The name of the project was IR GP-140. (IR-Indian Railways, G- Global, P-Procurement, 140- The number provided by World Bank)

Since, the last two years I have been tracking all those who have been associated with GP 140.

Lets have a look what happened 22 years back at CLW(Chittaranjan Locomotive Works).

Till now i have contacted most of the GP 140 engineers.

The engineers were from Switzerland And Australia.

The original concept goes back to ABB Transportation in Switzerland for the electrical part and ABB Henschel in Kassel for the mechanical part including bogies. At one time ABB Henschel stepped out. As a replacement, ABB Transportation in Australia was chosen.

ABB Transportation acquired the remaining assets and of course the design staff and expertise of Comeng the former world known builder of some of Australia's greatest trains and electric locomotives. The design engineer responsible for the locomotive bodies went to Chittaranjan to see the methods used and basic designs being manufactured because the major portion of the contract was to be built there, the Lok 2000 body was too expensive and complicated to achieve what Europe countries usually wanted. In addition ABB had other engineers from Clyde Engineering, the company who built most of Australia's diesel and electric locomotives since 1951.

The G9 bogie was basically already designed and existed for other locos. Similarly also for the P5 bogie. For the IR project only adaption had to be made.

The carbody had to be designed new in Australia, as there where only concept drawings from ABB Henschel existed.

Since the bid activities were done in Switzerland, the general project lead later on was also in Switzerland.

The factories where the P5/G9 components were made:

Traction Motor = ABB-Birr,

Traction Transformer = ABB-Secheron,

Control Electronics = ABB-Turgi,

Assembly = ABB-Zurich

Loco shell and Fabrication = ABB-Australia

Let's have a look at the Indian team.

The men who absorbed the 3 Phase Technology at Chittaranjan Locomotive Works were:

There were two Dy CEE's at CLW during GP 140.
Mr Pradip Sengupta
Mr Sadasivan Velukutty

The CEE (Project) at the D&D was in those days:-
Mr. V.K. Raheja

The Principal CE CLW was in those days:-
Mr. P.C. Sehgal.

The Dy CME was:-
Mr. S.K. Singh.

The General Manager was:
Mr. Chidambaram.

1. Mr Pradip Sengupta

Mr Pradip Sengupta was the Deputy Chief Electrical Engineer, Design and Development of Chittaranjan Locomotive Works, during the year 1990. He was one of the pioneers who was involved in the absorption of 3 phase technology during GP 140.

22 years later, his son "Sucharit Sengupta", who lives in United States of America and is currently working with Microsoft contacted me by seeing my blog and i met him.

A gem of a person. His knowledge of 3 phase is just astounding.This man is a real storehouse of information. Ask him any question on Locomotives and he answers in a flash. After talking to him, it’s a feeling oh! why don’t I get to interact with him more often.

Inspite of our tete a tete being for a very short time, I take this opportunity to share with everyone whatever little I came to know from him.

It’s mentioned in this post of my blog.
(History of "GP 140")

2. Mr Sadasivan Velukutty

Mr Sadasivan Velukutty was the Deputy Chief Electrical Engineer, Design and Development of Chittaranjan Locomotive Works, during the year 1990. He was one of the pioneers who was involved in the absorption of 3 phase technology during GP 140. He is also the architect behind WAP 7 Locomotive. Currently he is the director of Advanced Rail Controls Private Limited, Bangalore.

3. Mr Puneet Prakash & Mr Rajan Singh

Mr Puneet Prakash was one of the engineers in CLW in the year 1996 from ABB Zurich who taught how to build WAP 5 and WAG 9 Locomotive. His team consisted of three members who taught the entire process of building the Locomotive.
1. Igor Savicic
2. Olaf Bautze
3. Puneet Prakash

He is currently one of the senior managers working with Alstom France.

Mr Rajan Singh was involved in the maintenance team in Gomoh from ABB. He taught engineers how to maintain and troubleshoot the WAG 9/WAP 5 Locomotive.
Currently he is based in Alstom Bangalore.

4. Mr Pradyumna Sengupta

The engineer who was involved in the Gomoh team during GP 140. Currently he works with Bombardier Transportation.

5. Mr Pankaj Sen

Mr Sen, one of the Senior persons to be involved in the project from CLW. This man was in Switzerland during transfer of technology. The person to get training from the assembly shop at ABB, Switzerland.

6. Mr U.S Ojha

Mr U S Ojha. He is a GP 140 engineer. He was in Switzerland during 1996 for training purposes for the G9 Loco. He had received training of FUPLA language at Oerlikon, Switzerland and for trouble shooting procedure in 3-phase locos. Currently he is an engineer in Gomoh.