Electrification of the Great India Peninsula Railway

Abstract

To a joint meeting of the Institute of Transport and the Institution of Electrical Engineers on April 28, Mr. F. Lydall read a paper giving a general account of the suburban and main line electrification of the G.I.P. Railway. He compared the actual with the anticipated traffic and dealt with the design of the plant and apparatus. The electrified portion of this railway is second only in extent, within the British Empire, to that on the Southern Railway in Great Britain. The length of single track fully equipped is 571 miles, the capacity of the substation plant is 100,000 kilowatts, and there are 272 miles of 100,000-volt transmission line. It joins Bombay, a city of about 1¼ million inhabitants, situated mainly on an island, with Northern and Central India by the North-Eastern main line and with Southern India by the South-Eastern main line. Both these lines have to negotiate the escarpment which runs roughly parallel to the coast about forty miles inland, known as the Ghats. On both sections the ruling gradient is 1 in 37. The reason given why the traffic is less than was anticipated is the world depression of trade, which affects India in general and Bombay in particular. The most prolific source of trouble in electric operation is the propensity of the crows in and near Bombay to build nests with iron wire on the overhead line structures. It is related that one such nest was built of metal spectacle-frames which had been filched by a crow from an open shop-window. During the nesting period, crows fly about with pieces of wire sometimes about a yard long in their beaks, and this naturally sometimes causes short circuits. Flying foxes also have sufficient spread of ‘wing’ to hook across the mains on 20,000-volt lines. Methods to overcome these difficulties have been devised.