An engineering perspective of the past, present and future of Railways

December 23, 2011, 7:41 pm

Eng. B. D Rampala Memorial Lecture

The 9th Eng. B.D Rampala Annual Memorial Lecture organised by the Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka (IESL), was held at the Wimalasurendra Auditorium of the institution on 20th December 2011. This year’s lecture was on the theme ‘An Engineering perspective of the past, present and future of Railways’ delivered by Eng (Prof) Amal Kumarage (Senior Professor of Civil Engineering, Department of Transport & Logistics Management, University of Moratuwa).

The significance of the theme and contents of the lecture that follows would surely be not lost on policy makers, administrators, professionals etc. and who could help revive the Sri Lanka Railways at the present times. The late Eng.B.D Rampala, as General Manager, Sri Lanka Railways (1955 -70) had risen up to the occasion when the country needed its sons to decide its own destiny. His sterling performance in that seat won acclaims both within and beyond the shores of our country and set an example to all others.

The IESL is the premier professional body, incorporated by an Act of Parliament, to serve the science and practice of engineering in Sri Lanka. It piously commemorates the engineering greats of the past who gave invaluable service to the country during their lifetime, with memorial lectures on themes that are relevant to the present times. The IESL which has over 14,000 members on its roll currently had the honour of having the late Eng. B.D Rampala as its President in 1958.



By Eng (Prof) Amal Kumarage

Continued from yesterday

It is important to for us to remember that engineering can only be practiced in organisations and organisations need designers, planners, implementers, quantity surveyors, maintainers, logisticians and so on. If even one of these contributions are ignored or over ruled the engineering supply chain breaks and the end product would be less than a professionally engineered product. In fact it cannot be called engineered. I was aghast the other day when someone from a large state authority told me that its leadership has been questioning its engineers why Engineering Estimates are too low as they hamper negotiations with contractors!! Can an engineering organisation function where cost reduction or optimization is not a core requirement? Do we need engineers to design and build things without consideration of costs? I was equally astounded when another very senior engineer from yet another state institution reported that they have been told not to check for quality as there was a need for the contractor to finish the job and to send his resources to the next job which was equally urgent. I hear regular laments from many engineers in planning sections that they are simply being told what to do. Feasibility Studies are commissioned after public announcements of projects are made. Simply stated the status quo has become that what is planned is not implemented and that which is implemented is not planned. Moreover, design sections lament that they are mere spectators having to accept supplier based designs. Survey plans are not consulted before sending the bull dozers to clear the land. Of course not all engineering agencies have all these problems. But certainly the complaints are more regular and louder. If engineers are not given the space to practice their profession, we may not have engineered infrastructure in the future. We may not have engineering institutions in the future. Engineering itself could reduce to simply carrying out what is decided by others. These are matters that all engineering institutions and indeed perhaps even the IESL should raise with the highest authorities and address with due concern.

In the opening address to the 76th Annual Sessions in 1982, as its Chief Guest, Mr Rampala recalls the time when ‘the Chief Executive of the island was the Governor. He notes that the country had administrative officers on one side- namely the Civil Servants, the services including the Police on another side and Engineers on the third side- which he refers to as the third leg. He observes that ‘there was nobody else to interfere with them or give advice. What they thought as right for this country was done. The engineers were the people who looked after the development of the country’.

Today this has become the vested role of politicians. It appears that society has accepted that only politicians can and know how to develop a country and that professional are only needed to carry out their decisions without comment or concern. This is a culture that prevents a new generation of Rampala’s from coming to the leadership of the engineering profession. The culture of constant policy reversals, program reversals, process reversals as well as personnel reversals are becoming commonplace in engineering institutions as in political institutions. As such the constant replacement of GMRs and Heads of institutions does not allow such leadership to develop at least from the state sector. There is also however every indication that the expectations of engineers in the private sector are also fast becoming likewise.

A hypothetical or ‘test’ question I would like to pose to ourselves today is- would Mr. Rampala have been able to deliver what he did if he were the GMR today? Would he have even survived leave alone 14 years even 14 days? Or would he have been among the many engineers who have left the state engineering system in frustration of not been able to practice engineering with integrity and aptitude.

Dr TL Gunaruwan, also GMR and later Secretary of the Ministry of Transport till 2009 notes that Mr Rampala was one who chose the option to "leave" positions when he felt that he could not do a genuine job any longer. It has been observed that he had left GMR’s office all of a sudden in 1970, when the victorious Trade Unions were coming in procession to railway HQ after the 1970 elections. It is possible that he would have realized the times had changed and that "professional management" was no longer possible. Similarly, he also left the 1977 administration, when he could have well existed as a Consultant. As much as he had energy to deliver, he also had the honesty and courage to quit when things were going wrong, a quality that is very rare among professionals today, engineers or otherwise. It can be seen that Eng Rampala always made decisions based on his professional judgment and was not prepared to allow trade unions or political authorities to direct him. When he considered such freedom was not available he was ready to leave.

Will the deterioration of engineering processes and practices rob the engineers of the respect for engineers and for engineering leadership that Eng. B.D. Rampala and his kind so methodically established in our country? I may sound an alarmist. But sometimes one wonders if we are conditioned into living in denial that we simply have no choice but to move on with the pressures and the trends of the times and that we have no power to charter our own course and destiny.

Secondly, Eng B.D. Rampala was a man in readiness to Lead

Eng. Rampala in his Presidential Address to the IESL in 1958 stressed the need for engineers to focus on design and planning in their work. He lamented that most engineers merely stand guard over an army of labourers and craftsmen wasting the asset they have. It is true that engineering is an esteemed profession that recognizes practitioners and not mere holders of qualifications. Today we are mulled to believing that the title of the position one holds in an organisation or the qualification one has is all that matters to being an engineer. We confine our identity as engineers to these titles and qualifications but not to what we should earn through the actual practice of the art and science of engineering. This is why true engineering leaders are hard to find today. There are many who aspire for leadership of engineering institutions but who are nothing more than administrators or as best managers or sadly sometimes even mere agents of politicians. Eng. Rampala demonstrated leadership and vision and did not restrict his work to the mundane activities of a head of department.

A core attribute of a leader is one who must be able to anticipate problems and take pre cautionary measures. It is rumored that Eng. Rampala was able to anticipate what could go wrong before anyone else, especially in Mechanical aspects of the engines he knew so well. It is said that he could trouble shoot the cause of a failed engine from his desk without even seeing the failed engine!!

It is recorded that he personally prepared the time tables for the expresses he introduced. He personally did many of the timing trials. He personally drove the locomotives in their runs. This is how sound technical planning and design processes were applied to the introduction of new ventures. That is why they were successful then and are still so today and will be for the future as well.

The year after the floods of Dec 1957 where 85 percent of the rail track was damaged was the year that Mr. Rampala became the President of IESL. In his Presidential Address at the AGM he states that in six weeks after the floods the engineers of the railways made the entire system re-operational. This feat was in fact repeated in 2005 when my friend Mr. Priyal de Silva was the GMR who interestingly also held office as President of IESL. On that occasion the Coastal Line was totally devastated by the tsunami of 26th December 2004 and he led the engineers of the Sri Lanka Railways to restore the train service in just 57 days.

Eng B.D. Rampala’s readiness to lead the railways was not only in times of crises, it was also in making the railways ready for the future.

Recognizing the challenge imposed by the rapidly growing motor industry especially the bus and the lorry, he was the first to recognize the ‘need for speed’ if the railways was to keep up with the development of road transport. In response he commissioned three damsels to three parts of the country on 23rd April 1956. Ruhunu Kumari arrived in Galle in just 2 hours after leaving Fort and proceeded to Matara in 3 hrs, while her counterpart Udarata Menike reached Nanu Oya in 5 ½ hrs and Badulla in 9 hours. The fabled Yal Devi arrived in Jaffna at an average journey speed of 55 kmph in just 7 hours reduced from the earlier 12 hours, out stripping road competition to ensure that the railway would remain in the front line for the next decade or more in terms of capturing the long distance passenger market. He also introduced fast goods trains.

Introducing diesel multiple units was his answer to solving the urban transport problem. These lighter and faster power sets as they are commonly referred to, ably provided for the transport of several hundreds of thousands of commuters to Colombo and to take them back with relative ease keeping the roads leading to Colombo free of congestion.

We also know that until, the 1950s, Sri Lanka Railways operated entirely with a lock and block signalling system. The Centralised Traffic Control System was also conceived by Eng. B.D. Rampala. Mr Lelwela also a GMR in later years observes in an article that when Mr. Rampala found that the cost of installing the CTCS would be prohibitive he negotiated with the supplier to buy only the hardware and had the department staff install it themselves. He also saw the need for quality and comfort in travel and introduced the first air conditioned coach in 1960- fifty years ago and long before the push for tourism began.

During his tenure the railway improved in all aspects. He introduced express trains, fast goods trains, dieselization from steam power, track improvements, communications, signaling, buildings and even circuit bungalows. However since then in most aspects these services and infrastructure have deteriorated year by year. The proposal for electrification that would have modernized the railways to make it competitive in to the modern world was shelved and repeatedly postponed. Even though there were attempts to handle the transport of containers it never got it as right as Mr. Rampala did in his projects. However in defense of many of the subsequent GMRs and other railway men many of them whom are known to me and some considered friends, I also know that getting a respectful ear was always difficult for the railways that by then was firmly considered by many especially in the Treasury as an asset of yesteryear and a liability of today.

The railway has been an active partner in economic development in the early years of our country. Colombo became an international maritime hub in the 18th century and consolidated its position around 1865 when the Suez Canal was opened and the traffic between Europe and Asia began using the Port of Colombo. It was also the year before in 1864 that the railway in Sri Lanka began operating. The success of the Port of Colombo and the development of tea as an international trading commodity went hand in hand. The railway was responsible for this inter-modal transportation function. The current transportation network of Sri Lanka is based on this important creation of Colombo Fort and Pettah as the multi modal hub for agricultural produce created first by the port, then by canal transport during the Dutch period and thereafter by the railways in the 19th century and in more recent times during the 20th century by the road, bus and trucking networks.

The railway currently handles just 5% of the passenger share and 2% of the freight traffic. It desperately requires regaining its contribution in the transport sector. Sri Lanka as a country equally desperately needs a multi modal transport network to reduce the almost total dependency on road transport, high fuel imports and consequences of rise in congestion and pollution. The railway needs to identify and compete in niche areas in which it can provide services that would be the most effective, efficient and are sustainable. One such area would be urban passenger transport wherein the rapid increase in motorization would prevent the use of all the road vehicles in a given area say at peak period. The railway will remain as a space efficient, cost efficient and environmentally green mode of transport ideal for promotion in urban and sub urban conditions. The railway requires to plan and to provide for a return of the railways as a primary provider of urban transport. A recent study conducted by the University of Moratuwa for the Road Development Authority has shown how the railway can ease the road congestion in Kandy city and suburbs. Its contribution in Colombo is better known but still requires modernization and integration with other modes of transport and of course building more track and station capacity.

The role of the railways in creating new and alternate transport hubs also requires urgent attention. Such hubs would require inter modal connections with linkages to ports and airports. The railway needs to develop hinterland connectivity from alternate hubs such as Hambantota. It also needs to create alternate suburban hubs at locations such as Kottawa and Ragama and possibly Dematagoda and Ratmalana. The creation of logistics or freight handling hubs to be served by rail and the advent of the railways to container movement are also niche areas that should be pursued in earnest especially because of the potential of high financial returns. The pre occupation of building new lines should be dampened and rationalized to provide connectivity for creation of hubs or for providing essential missing links that are deemed to be economically viable and not mere by rationale of incumbent politicians and their persuasions to connect their own constituencies to the railway network.

The railway also holds much potential in terms of domestic recreational and foreign tourist travel. It again requires integration of tourist interests with convenience of using the railways not merely as a mode of transport but also as an exposure or experience of Colonial Ceylon and the life during that period. It needs to integrate the railways with the tea industry and world famous Ceylon Tea all of which are symbols and brand names by which Sri Lanka is known internationally.

Clearly the railway has a Herculean task to regain its pride and place. Again that hypothetical test question is how would Mr. Rampala have set about these challenges? Would he have allowed foreign consultants to develop such a plan or would he have commissioned the talent at hand locally to develop plans? Or would he have waited for instructions ‘from the top’? Would he have canvassed support among MPs and Ministers not for some personal benefit but to simply get Treasury to approve such funding? Whatever the means we now need an intervention to elevate the railways to play a more strategic role in the national transport system.

Continued on Monday