IIT Kharagpur will train railway engineers on Vande Bharat systems for five years

IIT Kharagpur and the Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering (IRIMEE), Jamalpur, have signed a five-year memorandum of understanding under which the IIT will run specialised residential training programmes for railway officials on the technology inside modern trains.

What will be taught

• Electrical safety and protection systems
• Vande Bharat traction and propulsion: converters and traction motors
• Train Control and Management Systems (TCMS)
• Three-phase MEMU traction equipment
• Rolling-stock diagnostics, electrical condition monitoring and reliability engineering
• Regenerative and mechanical braking

The programmes combine lectures, laboratory experiments, hands-on work with the electrical and electronic systems, and field visits. IIT Kharagpur's Centre for Railway Research will coordinate.

Why a student should notice

India is replacing locomotive-hauled trains with self-propelled, electronics-heavy trainsets at speed, and the maintenance workforce has to be retrained for it. Power electronics, traction drives, embedded control and condition monitoring are skills the railways now need in volume, both in their own engineering services and across the suppliers that build and maintain the trains.

If you are studying electrical, electronics or mechatronics engineering, those are subjects worth choosing electives in. The railway sector is one of the few that will hire for them at scale for years.

CareerBox News Desk, reporting on the memorandum of understanding between IIT Kharagpur and IRIMEE, Jamalpur. Official portal: iitkgp.ac.in. Dates and eligibility change; confirm them on the official portal before you act.