Generating Electricity From Running Train

The other day the station master of Sitarampur Railway Station told me that the railway authority had approved the electrification of the route passing through Sitarampur station. I was sitting on my favourite bench on the platform and was thinking over the matter of this electrification. I knew it would take a long time for materialization of this proposed project. Now the trains were pulled by steam engines here. It is good to avoid stream engine considering pollution and the rapid depletion of coal reserve. Even in the United States most electricity generated comes from burning coal? In 2006, nearly half i.e. 49% of the country's 4.1 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity used coal as its source of energy. The situation is same with diesel –driven engines. Moreover India can ill-afford to use diesel for all the railway engines. So electricity is the best option if one can generate it. That was the stream of my thoughts that evening. But India is still a poor generator of electricity she needs badly to meet everyday consumption. It came to my mind suddenly over the possibility of getting electricity from a running train itself. We all know that we need some mechanical energy to move the dynamo for generating electrical energy. So we manipulate in every possible way to utilise constantly all the available means to get mechanical energy. But it is also not easily available situation in any country to get access to some automatic mechanical devices without least compromise. You need coal to produce thermal energy, force of moving water to produce hydroelectricity. And there are some other modes also to move a dynamo like nuclear energy. There can not be an easy way though the wind force and solar energy are being tapped nowadays.

But I thought a novel way of producing electricity simply from a running train while sitting on the platform. For instance if we can manipulate the constant whirling of the wheels of a running train by connecting them with dynamos fitted alongside the wheels –the dynamos would start generating electricity. Initially the engine would have to be driven by electricity from outside overhead electric line. But once the engine gets momentum –it might get electricity from its own running wheels. The driver of the engine might then switch of the connection to overhead source as it is no longer required. The engine itself and all the wheels of the train become a source of mechanical energy for generation of electrical energy free of cost. If the engine is allowed to run without stop it would run perpetually. But the train must stop at stations. So once stopped the engine would require again to get connected to outside source of electricity for its initial movement till it is enabled to generate electricity from the running wheels. But it would reduce the consumption of outside electricity. Moreover –we may charge a battery inside the engine so that the battery may be used to generate initial motion after stops at stations.

One may ask how much electricity can be generated in this way to run a high speed train. Obviously there might be some loss of energy in this process which may affect the engine getting a required momentum. But it all depends of the innovation of technological devices to utilize from the optimum mechanical energy from the running wheels. The modern trains in many countries including Japan run at very high speed. But such trains do not have conventional wheels. For example the modern technology of high speed trains works on magnetic levitation. In that case the device required to be changed in another way.

Finally, the linear motion of a high speed train itself may be used to support the auto-system Blog Awarddevice for generating electricity.

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Everyday for some time you are in the habit of surfing different websites and in the way you come to know many ideas, facts, works, activities etc of innumerable people and countries. Sometime for some needs you require to find the desired sites i.e. for further studies or say about modeling and sometime it’s for sheer mechanical inquisitiveness. You are in many ways connected to various persons. Some of them are friends and some relatives. So you have to check your inbox regularly to find your mails from your acquaintances and some of them may need immediate responses. There are also some mails from persons whom you do not know. So you have to reply some mails.

You have your cell-phones. There are, if I am not wrong, saved many cell phone numbers of different people with whom you receive and send messages and calls everyday in proper and also odd times. You have to reschedule your program on the basis of some calls or messages. You have to know and enquire on different matters related to the callers. This is necessary.

You have your car which carries you to different places of both of your liking and disliking. You have to be frequently still and stagnated in traffic jam. You have missed several important matters for this traffic jam like failing to board your plane, not being able to be present in the solemn-moment of birthday-cake celebration etc. There are several instances like this. You have been harassed with the policemen for someone’s FIR for consequences resulting from your driving.

You are always in a terrific whirl of sociability. You are never alone. When you can manage some time of your own and feel watching a television serial or a program on social crime-you are thrown amongst some people you are not related to but you become disturbed.

The modern devices that help you always –also constantly wind you with a constantly moving wheel that never stops. You have long forgotten to know you –taste you in your terms. It’s the system that drives you, moves you and generate every moments several things to lure the palate of your life impulses so that you may never feel yourself as separate from this whirling situation. Your psychological system is gradually changed into the working system of the society. You become a live commentary of produced by the gadgets you use. Man formed society for his own secure living. Now the society itself needs man for its own sustenance. It’s now a huge super-structure that claims its millions of needs like a octopus spreading everywhere its sucking tentacles. This may sound like a philosophic symbolism but it’s more powerful and strong than its symbol.

Sitarampur is almost a village. Its only attraction is its railway station and the giant-known to people as 2115 UP. Otherwise it’s a calm place. The world of Sitarampur speaks with the thirsty birds in the noon, the barking of a lone dog in the night and the sound of the bells hung around the cows’ neck when they return from the field. In the dead of night when you turn your side on the bed you may hear the faint whistle of an engine of a goods train passing through Sitampur station. The world is related to you here. When you hear it, you hear yourself. When you touch it, the world touches you. You are not alone here as the very word ‘alone’ is a word of urban and modern man. When you are here you exist with on a bond between you and the world you were born in.

But I’m not telling you to return to your own home. You can not return. You can not dismantle the superstructure that has grown on you. A day will come when you will feel restless and suffer like anything. Anguish and suffocation will push you on the verge of extinction-death. But however certain its coming -it is never an escape route. Alas! You will not get rid of this superstructure that has been created by your desire and mind-the very constituent of your life. If in any future you feel that you are more than what you are and you want desperately to exceed yourself-then and only then you will find the power to re-create you. You will get the universe that is within you.

Do not think of Sitarampur. It will have long ceased to be what it is now. Modern man has no native land.

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Missed the train

I was sitting on the bench on the platform of Sitarampur railway station. I liked this place and whenever I felt for a refreshing atmosphere I went to the station. A railway station has a peculiar distinctiveness. It’s not a place in the sense a market or a sea-beach is a place. The very sense of place is absent in a railway station. The far from every side of the world effaces the local. It never allows a sense of stagnation and repetition in the psychology of one when he or she enters or waits in a railway station.

Slowly the Sun dipped behind me leaving his magical hues for the clouds in the western sky. Suddenly I remembered that it was 17 th April today. Aye –I had come to Sitarampur exactly on this day five years ago by 2115 UP. Five years had gone by and Sitarampur had nothing new for me. No corner of this small town lied hidden to me. But five years ago when I had got down on this very platform the place had had a queer and exotic look.

The signal was given for the coming 2115 UP.

The train entered the station. I stared and was watching from head to tail of this nonchalant train –just waiting with a restless tension. Sitarampur was just any other station to it.

Suddenly I wanted to board it and to be one with it.

Sitarampur was a world of everyone. 2115 UP knew none.

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PROMOTION

Gagan-babu is the station-master of Sitarampur Railway Station. After serving the railway many years as assistant station-master, Gagan-babu was promoted to the post of station-master at the fag end of his life and posted at Sitarampur station two years ago. Those who joined the Indian Railways with Gagan-babu as assistant station masters are all now superior to Gagan-babu in positions. He remained in the same position from the date of entry to the railways for forty years. If anyone becomes inquisitive enough to enquire about his efficiency it is open for him to find that inefficiency was nowhere recorded in his service book. His colleagues felt pity for him and many of them also felt it their ordained prerogative to advise him to bring the matter of the injustice to the cognizance of proper authorities. But Gagan-babu could not be able to make an application. He carried in him a sense of humiliated self and so deep was this sense of humiliation that he always avoided any discussion about his career. He generally shied away from his colleagues as his very presence amidst them would trigger a sense of pity and compassion in the mind of his friends.

He had no grievance against his authorities. To him reminding the authority of denying him a promotion would be an act of digging out some hidden inefficiency about his performance hitherto unknown to all. So what was the use of making open a point of his inefficiency for a wider public?

It had been very difficult to get an employment when Gagan-babu got an assignment and that too in as big an organization as Indian Railways. Gagan-babu in his childhood had been very fond of reading travelogues and about the places of tourists’ interest. But he could never dream of travelling to far off places like Delhi, Shimla, Kanyakumari etc. They were for the well-off persons to travel in such places. It had not been easy for him to go to Calcutta for attending the interview for the railway service. The up and down train-fares from his village to Calcutta was too much for his father to afford. So after getting the service when he found that he was entitled to get two free passes a year to travel by railways he felt indebted to the railways for being so generous to its employees and with this also, for the first time in his life, Gagan-babu had become relieved to be under the care of such a giant and and generous master.

So it never occurred to him that he needed, by means of an extra effort, to remind the authority that he should get more.

It was after many years Gagan-babu began to find unevenness in the system in respect of treating the employees. He was not considered at par with his colleagues. He found himself as left out at every sorting every year and a day came when he discovered that he had been discarded for something more. He began to feel ashamed of himself and always faced a sense of guilt at any incidence of facing his higher authorities. It was, he thought, a great wrong on his part by failing to please his authority by getting a higher responsibility. He was growing very keen to hide his ‘inefficient’ self from the eyes of all. Fortunately for Gagan-babu he did not have to work with many persons in a small station as assistant station master.

So one day when he received the office order promoting him to the post of station- master he kept an emphatic low profile with his promotion and did not inform any of his colleagues who had been working in other far off divisions of the railways. Losing was not so bad but to receive a crown only for the last two years rubbed salt into the wounded and hidden sense of inferiority.

Gagan-babu’s tenure as station-master in Sitarampur station has now come to an end. He will have to retire today. A young man of his early thirties has arrived yesterday and took charge of the station from Gagan-babu. Gagan-babu had been living here in the railway quarters with his family. He sent them along with all his belongings to his village home a week ago.

Gagan-babu is free today- the last day of his stay at Sitarampur. The young station-master is very smart and has already brought everything of the station under his command in a single day. It has been at his insistence the assistant station master arranged a get-together at his quarters and the three have had a great lunch, the cost of which has been borne by the new station master. There has been no other way of giving a farewell to the outgoing station master.

In the evening all the three-Gagan-babu, the new station master and his assistant are waiting for the last train 2115 UP. Gagan-babu will never return here. The train appears in the far. Suddenly Gagan-babu feels the powerful authority of the railways is coming in the train to bid him good-bye. A sense of repentance darts through his mind.

Gagan-babu has left to join another phase of his life. Does any authority exist there to whom Gagan-babu will have to prove his efficiency anymore, and if yes, what for?

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2115 UP on hidden rails

In one summer afternoon I went to Sitarampur Railway Station at quarter to 6 and sat on the bench on the platform waiting for the last train which was scheduled to arrive at 7.30 pm. So I would have to wait. It was not comfortable and rather bothersome to wait for a long time especially as I was a little restless then in my mind for my uncle whom I wanted to meet as soon as possible. I had received a letter yesterday from my uncle requesting me to meet him as soon as possible for an urgent matter. He had not, in his letter, mentioned the nature of his urgency. He was a bachelor and lived alone with his servant cum manager, Bhutnath, who was very trustworthy and had been living with him for a long time. So I was worried with the word ‘urgent’ in his letter although he had advised me not to be worried and read too much about his request. But it is futile to claim a calm poise of mind if one is summoned to visit someone for an urgent but unknown need. My uncle should have studied a little about human psychology!
Naturally the time passed in a slow pace and played tossing with my worries to every conceivable direction. When I took out the last cigarette, moved to the waste-bin and threw the empty pack into it- the small but convincing light appeared in the far end of the rails. Suddenly I felt indebted to the train.

There train was almost empty as it was a Sunday. I sat beside a window and became relaxed. The body had been feeling uncomfortable for bearing for a long time an unusually heavier mind which it was not accustomed to. It was always pleasant to sit beside a window of a train. Though little could be seen through the darkness outside, I enjoyed the cool air blowing gently over my face and hair. Darkness has also a face. Only she prefers to be enigmatic and likes to reveal much while consciously hiding herself. Night, perhaps, showed much-I thought. I went on discovering that we could see the world through eyes which were dependant of light and we could never be independent of those slaves of light in daytime. We were shown only what were there to be shown in this limited world. But in the night we could find in our own way. And we were the limit.

The dots of lights outside ran past my window. I wanted to see more but-they went past before I could grab them. After some time the world vanished as the night grew. Slowly there appeared a sky above and it expressed with its innumerable stars the hidden hearts of all those now gone hidden in sleep.

Suddenly I found brazen light outside. There were so many people running here and there and coolies with luggage on their heads moving in a single direction as men of sorrows with the burden of life move towards a single destination-death. It was a scene of commotion everywhere. There were none inside my compartment. What station was it? I looked at my watch. It was 11.30 pm. I got down from the train and came to know that the train reached its last station. I had fallen into sleep and had been unaware when I went past Giridi –where my uncle lived. I became frightened at this unimaginable situation. I ran to a railway official in uniform and enquired about the next train to reach Giridi. He informed me that there was no train at that hour of time. I would have to wait in the platform to catch the first 2115 DN tomorrow.

I had never faced such a situation earlier in my life as I had never missed any train for not coming to station in time.

This time perhaps the 2115 UP had run through the hidden rails.

Kusum goes to her husband's house

Lachhmi could not remember exactly when she had come here in sitarampur. Long, long ago she had to leave her parents’ home to live with her husband and in-laws. It had taken many days for Lachhmi to accept the place and the family of her husband. She had wept in the night and felt strongly to return to her parents and her little brother. Kusumpur-her native village, had not been very far from Sitarampur. She had frequently thought of fleeing to the fold of her old cozy life. She had been eight then.
She was now forty eight. During these forty years there had been a metamorphosis in her life. It was now her family, her own. She was happy and satisfied and never wanted to go anywhere outside her husband’s village and her family. Lachhmi could hardly find time to think over her childhood, her parents, brother and her village. They had receded to another world-which Lachhmi would never need to look for.

Her in-laws were long dead. Lachhmi had become the mistress of the family. All her three sons were married by now. Raghu, her husband was a meek and humble man. But Lachhmi had a daughter, Kusum-who was only ten years old. Kusum had become dear to all perhaps because of coming as a girl child-after the family had become much relieved with consecutive three male children.

Raghu was a wealthy farmer. So he did not face any trouble to find a suitable young man for Kusum. He was the only son of a wealthy grocer.

The marriage was settled and Lachhmi and Raghu began to be ready to celebrate the last marriage occasion of their family. Everybody was waiting happily for the day. But Lachhmi was a little depressed. At the time of discussions and exchanges of information with regard to the marriage, Lachhmi had asked her husband, “Is it in a village or town?”

“It’s a town, a very populous place,” Raghu had gone on telling “It takes almost one and half a day to reach there.”

“Oh, then it’s not possible to go on foot or by a cart”, Lachhmi had said depressingly.

“No, no-it’s the train that takes thirty four hours!” Raghu replied with a self respect and looking towards the railway station continued “It’s no problem. Kusum will board the train 2115 UP from our station and reach at the door-steps of her in-law without a break journey. You can not reach there without train.”

Lachhmi had suddenly remembered the day when she had come here by a bullock-cart. It would not be possible for Kusum to come to her frequently. It was too far a place.

The marriage was over. The whole family with the bridegroom with his bride gathered at the platform of the station. Lachhmi came to the station for the first time. The whole world appeared to be an alien world. Kusum was weeping hiding her face into the breast of her mother. Raghu suddenly told in a loud voice “The train is coming.”

Lachhmi looked to the engine. It seemed to be cruel and angry-profusely pouring hot steam. It was fretting and fuming at the childish behaviour of the restless people. The train had only three minutes’ stop here. So Lachhmi did not get into the train for a last hug. The bell tolled and the train moved on.

For a moment Lachhmi felt that the whole world fell wrong with development. It had separated people and deported them to far unknown places from where it was very difficult to return.

It was a big rain-tree. It bore innumerable pink flowers in summer. Sometimes some places get characteristically memorable by virtue of some presence about them. I knew of a place because of an old temple there. The plaster had fallen off from its walls that had long ceased protecting a deity. It stood with a dark hollow, reminding an absence. I heard it had been a Shiva-temple. The place bore an impression of abandonment to me. So was it also with this rain-tree. It gave an inseparable dimension to the railway platform on which it stood. The tree swayed its branches and leaves in nonchalant air to diffuse the hustles of people with the trains.

It stood on the edge of a fencing that separated the station from outside. On a careful examination it would be evident that the tree should have stood on the other side of the demarcating line along the platform. Perhaps the in-charge, an Englishman, under whom the station had been planned and constructed, had fallen in love with the tree. So he had encroached with a little curve, enclosing the tree within the station area. That was fifty years ago.

There was a bench under the tree for the waiting passengers. In summer the place beneath the tree was full of fallen flowers and the evening air carried a fragrance that reminded one of far off places, the destinations of all trains of the world.

I would visit the station of an evening and sit on the bench. It was very refreshing to sit there. The tree was also a habitat of many birds. So in the evening there was loud tweeting and chirping of the birds as they prepared for rest for the approaching night. The night fell on this place from this tree.

One afternoon, in the month of April, the entire sky turned black with clouds. The tree became still - and not a single leaf moved. It was an abnormal stillness. I left the station for home. On the way, suddenly, a violent storm came rushing from somewhere. I began to run. It began to rain also. In minutes the storm and rain made terrible havoc. When I reached home I was completely drenched.

In the morning we found widespread devastation everywhere. I heard that the railway station was greatly damaged. The metal shade on the platform had been blown off. But when I reached the station the first thing that attracted my eyes was a void. The tree was not there. It was uprooted and fell on the other side of the platform leaving a big hollow on the platform.

I went to Ranchi after a few days. I returned after one month and reached the station by 2115 UP in the afternoon. The station wore a new look after a thorough repairing. The curve of the platform had been set right by a straight fencing. There was no trace of encroachment now.

He did not arrive

It was a very cold evening.

I reached the station a little too earlier to receive Dilip. Dilip had written to me that he would come by the last train-2115 UP which was scheduled to arrive at 9 in the evening. Dilip was my friend. But both of us had forgotten each other as we forget many things in life. The streams of our lives had carried us to different shores and we had been separated from each other. We had belonged to two different worlds and never need to cross to the other’s. Perhaps demands of life are more impelling than the needs of friendship. It does not mean that I had been living a friendless life. Some had become my friends in the mean time and I enjoyed their friendship and I loved them also as it was natural to love my wife and children. Life is weaving through relations.

So, when after twenty years I received a letter from Dilip informing me that he had intended to come here to meet me, I was puzzled. I frantically tried to feel what this meant. The very first sense that confronted me was a sense of absurdity. But this vanished instantaneously and I tried to wake myself up in a far off past to find who and how this person had been to me. I started connecting the worn memories into a living feeling. Twenty years was a long time. I started musing on our friendship and in a few days I was able to enter in my past and discovered that I had lost a world-that had been more mine than this one I lived now.

How old was Dilip now? He had been four years older than I. Was he too old to be recognized? He informed me nothing about himself. Even he did not find it necessary to write how he had come to know my whereabouts. And why he was coming? I got tensed. I looked at my watch. There were a few minutes for the train to arrive. I started walking along the platform with some restlessness. Very few persons were there on the platform. I lit a cigarette and as I puffed my tensed smokes before my nose-the green light appeared on the signal post.

The train was coming. He was coming. The train stopped on the platform. Suddenly I became numb. Some persons got down and the persons waiting with me for the train got in. There were two ppeople near me who had just got down from the train. I went near them. No –Dilip was not there. They were all known to me living in my neighborhood. The train was shown the green signal. Suddenly I could gather myself and frantically seeking Dilip in the silent void in the platform. Was it really that Dilip did not come? I got satisfied that I searched to my best. I had nothing to do if Dilip did not come. I lit another cigarette.

The last train began to move and soon vanished in the dark. I stared on the two rear red lamps as long as they could be seen.

Creation

He touches not-as he senses the world as his touch.
He is, because he is all.

But he is alone,
and by his self’s loneliness he surpasses him and all.
He thinks not, but broods his self-
as a single and lonely star
broods to evolve an infinite sky.
He creates millions of cells from within
in a wonderful efflorescence of his imagination
and achieves a wonder, his body,
once hidden in a dream.
In an overriding silence
where everything is in a still within,
he opens his secret eyes,
and makes all open to love.