Team News Riveting
Bhilai, July 31
SAIL-Bhilai Steel Plant’s Rail and Structural Mill (RSM) has created a new day record with 47 welded rail panels in 260 metre length produced on Tuesday, bettering the previous record of 46 welded rail panels produced on 13th January 2023.
Director In-charge Bhilai Steel Plant, Anirban Dasgupta and Executive Director (Works) Anjani Kumar visited RSM on Wednesday to personally congratulate the RSM Team. Interacting with CGM (RSM & RTS) Tirthankar Dastidar, other senior officers and members of the RSM collective, DIC, Dasgupta urged the RSM Team to maintain the tempo of production and aim for production of 50 welded rail panels in a day.
Inaugurated in October 1960, RSM has catered to the demands of Indian Railways for over six decades, whether it is length, grade and quality of rails produced, meeting stringent specifications as per standards specified by Railways. Incremental modernisation of the Mill has been taken up from time to time to upgrade production facilities. Responding to the requirement of Indian Railways for long rails, a new Long Rail Complex was set up in RSM in 2004, following which the Mill began producing 130-metre-long welded rail panels. The first lot of 260-metre-long welded rail panels was despatched from RSM to Railways in Feb 2006. A new Flash Butt welding machine was successfully installed at RSM in September 2022.
Long rail production from RSM has since steadily increased over the years. In the last fiscal year 2023-24, RSM recorded best ever production of 1.71 lakh tonnes of long rails, surpassing previous best of 1.52 lakh tonnes in FY 22-23. In the first quarter period (Q1) from April to June of current fiscal year 2024-25, RSM recorded highest long rail production of 46,654 Tonnes in any Q1 period so far, surpassing previous best of 37,516 Tonnes in 2012-13.
The Mill presently produces rails in R260 grade as demanded by Indian Railways. SAIL-Bhilai had developed the new grade of rails named R260 to fulfill the Railway’s requirement of micro-alloyed rails. The R260 grade of rails which is presently being rolled out both from RSM and Universal Rail Mill has norms & specifications more stringent than Grade-880 or UTS-90 rails that SAIL-Bhilai was producing earlier and even European standards.
RSM also produces thick-web asymmetric rails for use in switch points of railway tracks. The input rails for welding at the flash-butt welding plant in Sabarmati are being supplied in 26 metre length from Rail and Structural Mill. This has helped augment the volume of long rail panel supplies from Bhilai Steel Plant.
