Devender Singh Moves From Northern Railway to Railway Board as Director, Mechanical Engineering (Traction)

Devender Singh, presently serving in Northern Railway, has been transferred to the Railway Board and posted as Director, Mechanical Engineering (Traction). He is an officer of the Indian Railway Service of Mechanical Engineers.

Directors at the Railway Board sit a rung below Executive Directors and handle specific subject portfolios for the entire network. The Mechanical Engineering (Traction) desk covers locomotive policy: maintenance schedules and practices for diesel and electric locomotives, shed infrastructure, fuel and energy consumption norms, condemnation and rebuilding decisions, and the technical specifications that feed into procurement from the production units. The Board itself was restructured into a functional organisation with members for infrastructure, operations and business development, traction and rolling stock, and finance, alongside the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Directors work under Executive Directors within those verticals, and the traction portfolio sits with the member handling traction and rolling stock.

The Indian Railway Service of Mechanical Engineers is recruited through the engineering services examination and staffs the rolling stock function across zonal railways, the production units at Chittaranjan, Varanasi, Kapurthala, Perambur and Rae Bareli, and the Board itself. Singh's move from a zonal railway to the Board is the standard route by which field experience in locomotive sheds and workshops feeds into network-level policy. Officers of the service typically serve as divisional mechanical engineers and workshop officers before moving to zonal head of department or Board postings. The production units they oversee turn out locomotives at Chittaranjan and Marhowra, coaches at Chennai, Kapurthala and Rae Bareli, and wheels and axles at Bela and Yelahanka.

Northern Railway, headquartered at Baroda House in New Delhi, is the largest zone on the network by route kilometres, running across Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand and parts of Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. Its locomotive holdings and shed network give the mechanical department there a heavy operational load.

Traction policy at the Board has changed shape since the network completed broad gauge electrification across most of its routes. The diesel fleet, once the backbone of freight haulage, has been progressively redeployed, with locomotives moved to non-electrified sections, converted, or held as standby, while electric locomotive holdings have risen sharply. The Director dealing with mechanical traction sits at the point where that fleet transition is administered. Locomotive holdings have shifted decisively towards electric traction, with the diesel fleet reduced in share even as it remains necessary for non-electrified branch lines, departmental working, rescue duty and sections where overhead equipment is under maintenance. Decisions on which diesel locomotives to retain, where to base them and how to schedule their overhauls fall within the traction desk's remit.

The desk also carries the maintenance economics of a fleet running longer and heavier freight trains, along with the rolling stock fitment programme for Kavach, the train collision avoidance system being installed across sections of the network. Locomotive-side fitment is a mechanical and electrical department responsibility, coordinated from the Board. Freight haulage economics run through the same desk. Longer and heavier trains require multiple locomotives working in tandem, and the maintenance intervals, fuel and energy consumption norms and shed capacity that support that pattern are set centrally. Locomotive availability, measured as the proportion of the fleet fit for traffic on any day, is among the indicators the Board tracks by zone.

Singh takes charge at the Railway Board on transfer from Northern Railway.