Electric Traction | Explain Ideal Maintenance of electric locomotive.

Ideal Maintenance of Electric Locomotive: 

 Maintenance of the components includes all the steps taken to preserve it from deteriorating and enable it to give economical service with reasonable operating efficiency up to the full expected life.  

 Maintenance can be classified into three different categories namely running repairs, trouble shooting and preventive maintenance.  

Running repairs:

 These are carried out when the component has actually failed.

 This method of repair is technically unsteady or unsafe and may result in dangerous consequences specially when applied to the electric traction components. 

Troubleshooting:  

 Troubleshooting involves rectification of the defects by making temporary repairs so that the component is made 'get going on' till it is taken out for permanent and effective repairs. 

 For temporary troubleshooting, the locomotive operator has to take the help of carefully prepared troubleshooting chart.  

 These charts provide procedure for identifying and rectifying the defects and suggest the action to be taken in various possible type of faults affecting the component. 

Preventive Maintenance:  

 In case of preventive maintenance, advance actions have to be taken to hold off the future failures.  

 This is achieved by systematic inspection of various components and their timely repairs so that they should continue to give trouble free service up to the next inspection.  

 The ideal maintenance can be judged by the following three criteria:

i. Reliability of the Locomotive: The quality of the locomotive and the standards of maintenance can be judged from the frequency of cases when the locomotive has to be withdrawn from the service for the attention of the maintenance staff.

ii. Availability of the Locomotive for Traffic use: The quality of the locomotives and of the maintenance work may be appreciated by the percentage of locomotive hours available for traffic use as compared to the locomotive on line. 

   iii. Maintenance Cost: Overall cost locomotive maintenances. 

These three criteria which determine the quality of maintenance is not independent of each other but influence each other.