Poor quality wipers cause train delays, say motormen

If you think your daily local commute seems to be taking longer than usual, you can blame railway authorities for not improving wipers fitted on the windscreen of the train. The motormen are blaming poor quality of the wipers, fitted on the windows of motorman’s cabin for the delay.

If you think your daily local commute seems to be taking longer than usual, you can blame railway authorities for not improving wipers fitted on the windscreen of the train. The motormen are blaming poor quality of the wipers, fitted on the windows of motorman’s cabin for the delay.

HT Image

These wipers, presently fitted on the huge windows, are either small in size or its rubber is not good enough to wipe droplets hitting the windows, said the motormen.

This result in delay in services as trains runs sluggishly at around 30 kmph, which is lower than the average speed of 60 kmph. “The problem escalates during night if the wipers don’t function properly. So we are forced to run trains at much lower speed, thus resulting in delay of around 2 minutes,” said a motorman on condition of anonymity. “In the older trains pneumatic wipers don’t function properly and many times we have to manually operate the lever for using the wiper. Sometimes we also have to wipe it using a cloth, while running trains, which is dangerous,” added another motorman. “We have started replacing the 12 inch wipers with 20 inch ones,” said S Gupta, chief PRO, WR.