Indian Railway: The anti-corrosive Zinc-Aluminium metallizing alloy on tracks to start its journey soon

The world's fourth-largest railway network by size, the Indian railway, has its first application of anti-corrosive zinc-aluminium metallizing alloy on the tracks to improve its service life and secure safety is expected to begin soon in the Nagpur, Maharashtra division of the Central railway.

Following the approval by the research, designs and standard organization (RDSO) based in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, the alloy is being produced and applied at the Warora flash butt welding plant at Chandrapur.

Built with 85:15 ratios, the newly-developed denser and more ductile zinc-aluminium metallizing alloy would outperform the earlier only zinc-based anti-corrosive coating on the web and foot of the rails. As per the feasibility studies, the newly-developed alloy is being considered highly protective in environment conditions contaminated with chloride and sulphur dioxide and also effective against underground corrosions. The performance of the alloy on the tracks in the coastal zones, industrial belts and in those regions of extreme climatic conditions with higher humidity or moisture content in the air are expected to be better.

A senior railway official said: “The newly-developed metallizing alloy would be effective to control cracking of the tracks due to corrosions and reduce maintenance expenses.”

“The water accumulations in the fine crevices on the tracks and also in the cracks would be highly reduced. These cracks and water accumulations led to a reduction of the service life of a track from an optimum 12-15 years to merely seven to eight years. But, the life of the tracks can be now expected to be optimum after the introduction of the alloy coating on the tracks,” said the official.

“Already around seven to eight panels have been coated with the new alloy after several successful tests being conducted on it before the introduction,” he said.

It has been reported that the work of introducing the alloy had already started around two months ago. However, the project has received a spur after Sanjeev Mittal, General Manager of Central Railway visited the welding plant in January 2021. He had also formally inaugurated the work. The work at the Warora welding plant is now being expedited under the supervision of Ashwani Saxena, Principal Chief Engineer, Richa Khare, Divisional Railway Manager of central Railway and a team of engineers under senior divisional engineer Pawan Patil.

The railway official added: “The introduction of the zinc-aluminium would reduce the corrosion-related damages of the railway tracks to a great extent because of its ‘high electrochemical potential which would enhance the protection and reliability factor.”