TIRUCHY: A Team of 10 staffers of the Golden Rock railway workshop of Southern Railway completed repairs of a British-era clock at Tiruchy court tower free of cost.
The repairs took almost 40 days of hard work and required a lot of engineering know-how as the technology was about a century-old.
With the workshop already having a well-maintained 100-year-old similar clock tower, the court administration approached the workshop management with a request to repair the one in the court building. The request was accepted and a special team formed to do the job. “We accepted the request and formed a 10-member team to repair the clock. This team started work on February 25. We did not charge for this work as it is an honour to repair such a prestigious structure,” said Shyamadhar Ram, Chief Workshop Manager.
The engineering team visited the district court building, dismantled the structure and started work. However, it was difficult to get replacement parts for such an antique clock. The team started manufacturing some of the parts themselves to ensure the magnificent structure would start working again.
“We had done several trials to check the efficiency of the clock. The tower in our workshop has a clock dial on four sides, but the one in the court has one on three sides. We analysed the mechanism and came up with the best engineering solutions,” said P Subramaniam, assistant production engineer with the workshop.
As the country entered lockdown, the team stopped work on March 25. However, even with the few days’ gap, the work was completed in record time. “We manufactured several parts between May 7 and June 2. We also conducted several rounds of trials to ensure the clock would work perfectly. After finishing the work, we made certain changes in the dial to ensure the hands on the clock face would not be disturbed by wind. We put support bus rods for the dial and now it is working perfectly fine,” said another member of the railway team.