Hip Hip Hurray !! A Big Applause for these members who made this convention a great and successful and Evenful !!

PS: Sitting right now in my office, I am yet to come out of the hangover of this event ;-))

Hi Karan, Further to what I have mentioned, answering your query, Here is the link of the official document from IRICEN. This is a PDF file which is explaining the entire innovation and existing defects of diamond layouts at BSL and NGP prior to designing the special layouts.
http://www.wiki.iricen.gov.in/doku/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=613:7design_development.pdf

If you cannot download PDF, please mail me at avijay1610@yahoo.com and I shall mail you the same.

Also, refer to this official discussion forum of IRICEN where Shri. Vivek Kumar Gupta currently the General Manager / Rites had posted on this forum, about the new design of diamond laid down by Central Railway, and also Central Railway won the Prestigious Award of "Best Innovation of Indian Railways" for the year 2006-07. Shri Gupta was at that time, Sr DEN (Co) / Nagpur / Central Railway

http://iricen.gov.in/IRICEN1/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=766&sid=3d3fa302b7343e0d2f9a4af6b0b97a9c

Hi Karan, Further to what I have mentioned, answering your query, Here is the link of the official document from IRICEN. This is a PDF file which is explaining the entire innovation and existing defects of diamond layouts at BSL and NGP prior to designing the special layouts.
http://www.wiki.iricen.gov.in/doku/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=613:7design_development.pdf

If you cannot download PDF, please mail me at avijay1610@yahoo.com and I shall mail you the same.

Also, refer to this official discussion forum of IRICEN where Shri. Vivek Kumar Gupta currently the General Manager / Rites had posted on this forum, about the new design of diamond laid down by Central Railway, and also Central Railway won the Prestigious Award of "Best Innovation of Indian Railways" for the year 2006-07. Shri Gupta was at that time, Sr DEN (Co) / Nagpur / Central Railway

http://iricen.gov.in/IRICEN1/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=766&sid=3d3fa302b7343e0d2f9a4af6b0b97a9c

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Posted by Vijay Aravamudhan on 2011 Feb 10 06:41:13 +0000

Simply amazing

Karan - CR had been facing lots of issues when these diamond crossing at BSL and the one at Nagpur were on wooden sleepers, and each rails used to cut at same level, and both the corridor, i.e. the main and the freight lines were all rated at 10kmph, due to this.This was same as provided by you in the link. Moreover standard concrete sleepers were not available for these layouts. Its then that CR came up with its own design and specially manufactured concrete sleepers, that could accomodate such layouts. And the innovation that CR came up is of the freight line, at slighter elevation over the main lines, as you see in this pic, so this increased the speed for main lines whic are at same level, at 75kmph here while retaining 10kmph for the freight line. Now I am not bothered about how common these layouts are in the rest of the world, but in IR, I would definitely say, AFAIK, a diamond crossing layout where one track cuts another n angle of around 60-65 or 85-90 degres, is not common anywhere on IR. You may...

Karan - CR had been facing lots of issues when these diamond crossing at BSL and the one at Nagpur were on wooden sleepers, and each rails used to cut at same level, and both the corridor, i.e. the main and the freight lines were all rated at 10kmph, due to this.This was same as provided by you in the link. Moreover standard concrete sleepers were not available for these layouts. Its then that CR came up with its own design and specially manufactured concrete sleepers, that could accomodate such layouts. And the innovation that CR came up is of the freight line, at slighter elevation over the main lines, as you see in this pic, so this increased the speed for main lines whic are at same level, at 75kmph here while retaining 10kmph for the freight line. Now I am not bothered about how common these layouts are in the rest of the world, but in IR, I would definitely say, AFAIK, a diamond crossing layout where one track cuts another n angle of around 60-65 or 85-90 degres, is not common anywhere on IR. You may point out pls, if you know of any other such location. I also have read one official document on CR explaining about this diamond crossing issue and how CR dealt with it, and how RDSO did trials and certified it. Will try posting the link for your reference. And once more, I request you to go through the link that you provided and the photo, and compare both. Both are entirely different. The old layout was exactly as in the link you provided. And the one here on our server, is the innovation done by CR to eliminate the speed restriction on main line.

A suggestion for the next convention;

I noticed that there was a video camera too in presence.

Each delegate / participant in the convention could stand in front of the camera, identify himself by name and location, one by one?

I for one would say, "Uttam Padukone, Hartford, Connecticut, USA" and move on and Ashish could say, "Ashish Kuvelkar, Pune, India" and move on.

At the end of it all, the compilation could be labelled as IRFCA Convention 2012 and shared on our website.

Picture perfect ! By the way , who took the photo ?

Vijay, can you please elaborate what is special about this diamond crossing developed by CR? At first glance it looks similar to diamond crossings used all over the world, for example, this- http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Diamondcrossing.jpg

This is really great.

Nice wide angle shot.

The double line headed to the right of the picture is the Bhusaval - Nagpur main line. The single line seen vertically in this picture connects the Itarsi line to the yard.