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Raju carries a fish bolt spanner to tighten nuts and bolts, a tricolour lamp to alert locomotive drivers of any potential danger on the tracks and a rod weighing two kg to fix the lamp, if needed.People like him brave the vagaries of weather, snakes and wild animals, especially in remote areas, and filth on tracks to correct defects or to warn drivers of danger.Now, there is finally some good news for the gangmen. Raju will soon get new gear — a raincoat, a winter jacket, a luminous vest, an ergonomically designed toolkit bag and a pair of Bata shoes worth Rs 1,400. These would be in addition to his existing dress allowance of Rs 5,000 a year.Procurement of the special gear has started at South Central Railway, where Raju is employed, and at 15 other zones. A Railway Board notification issued on February 5 asked the zonal railways to equip every gangman better, a move that will make the railways spend Rs 8,000 more annually on each person on the ground. This will cost IR Rs 175 crore more a year.The new goods will have to meet the specifications mentioned in the IR’s notification. The railway document, for example, has clearly specified how a winter jacket, to be brought for Rs 2,500, has to be of “high quality”, “orange coloured” and “with inner lining, with or without hood”.“The railways have decided to provide track-maintainers branded shoes. We recently contacted shoe manufacturers such as Bata, Action and Liberty and asked them to make special shoes suitable for walking on tracks,” says Vinod Kumar Yadav, general manager of South Central Railway, headquartered in Secunderabad.Yadav was the convenor of a four-member railway panel that recommended what new gear should be procured for the track-maintainers.So how did the railway suddenly wake up to the needs of the gangmen? It all started as an informal suggestion by Railway Board Chairman Ashwani Lohani on a railway Whatsapp group after he had walked with a trackman in Delhi on a cold January night.Called Leaders of Indian Railways, the group had 35 users, including the chairman, board members and general managers, Yadav says.In less than a month, the transformation cell — a railway cell created last year to work on new ideas and fast-track decisions — had prepared the nitty-gritty of the plan.While wearing orange vests will make gangmen more visible from a distance and during fog, the IR has also asked its zones to procure lighter tools to improve the mobility of those maintaining the tracks.Vijay Kumar, a track-maintainer in Secunderabad, has already got the new tools. He says these have made his life easier. The fish bolt spanner that he uses now weighs only 1.4 kg, almost 900 g lower than the earlier one. The torch-like tricolour lamp to alert loco drivers weights half a kg now, instead of the 2.04 kg lantern earlier.The new staff — the rod used to place the tricolour lamp at an elevation — can be folded, making it easier to carry. Kumar, who originally belongs to Telangana’s Aler, has not been this excited about his gear in his 15 year career as a track walker.While the new gear will definitely make the lives of the track-maintainers comfortable, more has to be done to ensure these people are not run over by trains.In 2016-17, 96 track-maintainers lost their lives after being hit by running trains. There were 120 fatalities in 2015-16. One way to solve this problem is to equip them with Rakshaks, a phone-like device that gives a warning sound when a train approaches.The device, for which the IR needed to get licences and buy the requisite bandwidth (it works in the frequency of 160.450 MHz), was deployed only in a 24 km stretch between Secunderabad and Kazipeth in 2010.The project was not rolled out across the country. The Railway Board has in the recent notification mentioned about extending the deployment of Rakshak-type protection system to its highdensity networks. But, in reality, the implementing might not be as easy as buying superior quality raincoats or shoes.India has 67,367 km of railway tracks — six times the distance between New Delhi and New York. Every single km is covered by the track maintaining crew daily. All track-maintainers belong to a particular group, or gang, which is why all of them are also called gangmen. A gang, headed by a mate, has 20-25 members.Under a mate, there are two keymen, who walk the tracks during the day. Gangmen selected for night patrolling are called patrolmen. A patrolman walks twice the distance of a keyman. But unlike a keyman, he does not need to carry repairing tools. “A patrolman is more like an observer; a keyman is a mechanic on the track,” says senior section engineer Akbar, who commands the gangs on a stretch of 48 km in Ippuguda.Women were inducted into gangs many years now. But the South Central Railway has only now started building separate toilets and restrooms for women gang members. Currently, one out of every 20 track-maintainers in the zone is a woman. According to the latest IR data, there are 8,689 gangwomen across the country.Many were recruited on compassionate grounds — when a family member is hired after the death of an employee. For safety reasons, women track-maintainers are not given night walks.The modernisation by the IR will remove some archaic systems. But there are many more that should go.For example, what happens when a trackmaintainer spots a major crack while walking on the track? “A year ago, I saw a fracture on a track,” says Raju from Ippuguda. “I placed a pole with a red flag vertically on the spot and started running towards the side from where I expected a train to come. After 600 m, I placed a detonator on the track.”Raju and his colleagues carry coin-shaped detonators with them. When they see a crack in the track, they fasten a detonator some distance away. The detonator explodes loudly when a train passes over it, alerting the driver of danger.As the detonator is fixed some distance away from the crack, the loco driver gets time to apply brakes and stop the train, or at least slow down the locomotive to minimise deaths and destruction. “I saved a derailment that day,” adds Raju.It is time the Indian Railway modernised the archaic system. Chairman Lohani tells ET Magazine that providing mobile phones to track-maintainers is very much on the cards.“The Railway Board is contemplating giving mobile phones to track-maintainers. I can’t give a time frame to it, but we are serious about it,” he adds.Maybe, a day will come soon when Raju will no longer have to carry detonators during his walk on tracks.The track men are the backbone of the Indian Railways. We have safe railway tracks because of their hard work. Most of them need to walk on the tracks, during the day and at night.So, it’s essential that they are provided with proper clothes and shoes.The railways have decided to provide them branded shoes. We contacted shoe manufacturers such as Bata, Action and Liberty to manufacture special shoes that are suitable for walking on tracks.Each track man needs to walk at least six kilometres a day. So, the new shoe that we have got designed is lightweight and of high quality. We (South Central Zone headquartered in Secundarabad) also spoke to a few machine tool manufacturers to get lightweight tools. The new tools that the track maintainers will carry now are of 40% less weight.The track men have to walk on the track even in harsh winter and in heavy rains. So, in the procurement of new winter clothes and raincoats, we are keeping in mind both quality and weight.Think of a man wearing a heavy jacket and walking for 6 km! Also, the new bag that’s given to them is ergonomically designed.We have been emphasising a lot on improving the working condition of track men. In every beat, we are building rest rooms. As many gangs (a group of track maintainers) now have track women too, we are building separate toilets for men and women, and also separate rooms for taking rest.A few years ago, the South Central Railway first introduced Rakshak, a small device that alerts a trackman when a train comes. It gives a beep as the train approaches. Now, the railways wants it to be used in-high density networks across the country.