JAKARTA – Rapidly developing world railway technology is opening new gates to more efficient public transportation services. The Indonesia Railway Conference which was held at the Jakarta International Expo, Tuesday (30/7/2024) tried to reveal the actual situation of the world railway industry. The conference was held over two days on 30 and 31 July 2024.

Various players in the world's railway industry are involved in presenting various technologies according to their respective expertise.

World railway manufacturers and regulators were speakers in seven discussion sessions on different topics.

Head of the Prayudi Railway Maintenance Center, who is also an expert in railway facilities from Maska (Indonesian Railway Society) was one of the speakers in the fifth session and moderator in the sixth session, which he delivered on the second day of the conference.

Prayudi talked about the maintenance of railway facilities carried out in Indonesia.

“By avoiding failures, we can limit the impact of service quality and the cost of “non-quality” on the rail system as a whole, maintenance is necessary to counteract the loss of reliability caused by aging and use that might otherwise undermine operations” , explained Prayudi, explaining the importance of railway facility maintenance work in the operation of public transportation services. Maintenance work is one of the most important measures to improve transportation safety. Apart from being oriented towards the quality of facilities, maintenance work can increase the efficiency of operating railway facilities.

Railway rolling stock maintenance work is divided into two large groups. Preventive care and corrective care. "Preventive before a failure occurs, and corrective after a failure occurs," explained Prayudi.

Preventive maintenance includes routine maintenance work, including daily checking and monitoring, then checking and testing the function of railway facilities at designated crossings, and periodic maintenance (monthly, three-monthly, six-monthly period maintenance).

Corrective maintenance is when components are repaired, functions restored or modernization of old facilities to make them fresher. Railway facilities are said to be undergoing corrective maintenance, when they enter overhaul maintenance facilities, and large-scale facility modification facilities or facility upgrades to become more modern.

Interestingly, the fifth session of the conference carried the theme Advancement of Green Rail Transportation Solutions, the maintenance material presented by Prayudi focused on environmentally friendly railway facilities.

There are several types of trains operating in Indonesia. Conventional types of trains driven by diesel engines with fuel (fuel oil) generally still serve long-distance train trips. This type of modern electric-driven train is widely used for urban public transportation services.

Electric trains have begun serving inter-city travel in Indonesia on the Jakarta-Bandung route with the Whoosh fast train. The railway facility maintenance system explained by the Head of the DJKA Railway Center projects what is done to the electric train.

According to Prayudi, there are several types of maintenance carried out on fast trains. Level 1 maintenance, namely daily inspection and control (simple operations such as cleaning work and other routine checks). Then, when entering level 2 maintenance, the train must be removed from the operational schedule of public transportation services because it requires between one and six hours of maintenance work. Level 3 treatment takes a full day to a month. Then level 4 maintenance takes the form of repairing spare parts in the workshop.

Current high-speed train maintenance is generally carried out with a combination of corrective maintenance (condition based) and scheduled maintenance (interval based). This type of maintenance method is called smart maintenance on railway facilities.

Smart maintenance is carried out by scanning using the Condition-based Maintenance (CBM) approach, to find out the most appropriate solution between predictive and corrective maintenance.

Intelligent analysis of (train) condition data to identify trends and predict worn or damaged components.

"Maintenance is carried out when the operations needed to restore vehicles to good working order costless than purchasing new rolling stock, unlike throwaway items or consumables," concluded Prayudi.

On the same stage, several world railway industry players also spoke on specific materials with their respective expertise.

CRRC Qingdao Sifang Co., Ltd. which is a supplier of the Jakarta Bandung high-speed train series, talks about green technology in the railway carriage products they developed.

The carriage technology is explained in the material entitled Focused on Green and Intelligent of Railway Freight System Solution, by Jiao Zhou, GM International Business Center CRRC.

Apart from Chinese train manufacturers, there are companies Morgan Advanced Materials from America and CSA Computer & Antriebstechnik GmbH from Germany.