Статья: Passenger Rolling Stock of Indian Railways in the First Half-Century of Their Operation (2024)

Currently, the problem of training highly skilled, competitive specialists equipped with competencies necessary for their future professional activity is of particular relevance. This is key to building a talent pipeline in the transport industry in general and in the railway sector in particular where the activities of the majority of workers involve providing safety and continuity of operations. One of the topical issues is to study their values and meaning domain and motivational attitudes to their future profession as an opportunity to develop techniques of psychological and pedagogical support aimed at forming stable internal motives and optimizing the professional development of future specialists in the transport industry. The purpose of the study is to explore the specifi c features of the values and meaning domain and motivation of future specialists in the transport industry. In order to study the purpose-in-life orientations, personality traits and motivation of future specialists in the transport industry, a study was conducted with the participation of 50 people aged 20 to 24 years. The following methods were used: the Purpose-in-Life (PIL) Test by D. Crumbaugh and L. Maholick adapted by D. A. Leontiev; the questionnaire for the assessment of personality traits of a professional (LOP) by I.G. Senin and V.E. Oryol; and the Motivation for Success and Fear of Failure (MUN) method by A. A. Rean. The results for interpretation were obtained by mathematical and statistical data processing using correlation analysis (the Pearson correlation criterion). The sense of purpose in the students is associated with the ability to identify signifi cant conditions for achieving goals and everything that happens to them contributes to their personal growth. The more the students perceive their lives as emotionally intense and interesting, the less they tend to perceive their educational and professional activities as a source of stress. Conclusions: Students with clear goals for the prospects of their future professional self-realisation tend to show internal motives for achieving results to a greater extent. The feeling of meaningfulness and productivity of the students’ lives is associated with tension they experience in the learning process, conscious control of their actions and behaviour.

The construction of the fi rst high-speed railway in Russia is long overdue. Such a project would be an organic continuation and a new turn in the one and a half century history of Russian railway workers’ struggle to increase train speeds on the country’s railways.

The commissioning of the Big Circle Line in Moscow, some sections of which were laid jointly with Chinese underground builders, provided the fi rst experience of interaction with foreign construction contractors on the Moscow Metro. The paper investigates this experience which is of value for the development of such works in the future. The analysis was carried out on the basis of scientifi c and technical documentation on certain facilities, the progress and results of construction and installation works, and information on other events. The paper describes the facilities where construction and installation works were carried out by joint efforts and shows the peculiarities of interaction between Russian and foreign (Chinese) metro builders on a number of sections of the Big Circle Line of the Moscow Metro. The achieved results are demonstrated by the example of individual underground stations. The study reveals the peculiarities of material and technical support of works on the sections constructed by Chinese construction contractors. The mutual exchange of experience, technologies, and work management practices along with the application of various tunnel boring machines from both countries (Russia and the PRC) has yielded fruitful results, demonstrated the possibility and effi ciency of the direct engagement of foreign tunnel builders at Russian sites in close cooperation with their Russian counterparts, and revealed a scheme for rational division of abour, work management, and logistical support of works.

The paper proposes a new approach to solving the problem of increasing the economic effi ciency of railway transportation of viscous petroleum fuels (fuel oils) at low air temperatures. The physical properties of fuel oils allow them to be obtained when poured into the tank of a tank wagon in a stratifi ed state, when their density in the upper part of the tank is signifi cantly less than in its lower part. This blocks the natural convection of hot fuel oil on the cold walls of the tank, and it cools only due to the molecular thermal conductivity which is very small. Upon cooling down, a relatively thin highly viscous layer forms on the inner walls of the tank of a tank wagon, which acts as a heat-insulating shell, and the bulk of it (more than 90 %) retains high temperature and fl uidity throughout the period of transportation. The thermal and hydrody namiccal culations were performed using modern computer technologies (the ANSYS 5.6 software package). The results obtained show that the need to heat up the fuel oil during unloading remains, but already requires signifi cantly less time and heat energy. The proposed energy-saving technologies for the delivery of viscous petroleum products are especially relevant in Russia with its cold continental climate, long-haul transportation, and the current structure of the country’s wagon fl eet. The value of the results obtained lies in the fact that the proposal can be implemented on tank wagons in circulation with minimal change to their design. The technology of operation of the drain equipment at unloading points will not change either.