Nonapukur. What a name! In Bengali it literally means “salty pond”. Was there a pond somewhere nearby from which the place took the name? Quite unlikely! This place is in the heart of the city of Calcutta and was always a locality teeming with people even during the British Raj. The Lower Circular Road (now A.J.C Bose Road) Cemetery is adjacent and so are localities such as Mullick Bazar, Park Street and Park Circus. Many churches and institutions are located in Lower Circular Road that were built during the Raj and are more than a century old.
It has always been such a populated region of old Calcutta. So, where did the name Nonapukur originate from? A fair guess would be that there was a small water body nearby that was unusable by the local population and eventually was reclaimed by the British town planners to expand the land area on which now stands the historic Nonapukur Workshop of The Calcutta Tramways Company.
Nonapukur workshop is one of a kind. It is nothing like one would see anywhere in the world. Entering through the well secured and well attended gates of the workshop which clearly cautions against taking any photographs, one is suddenly transported back into time. Here in Nonapukur workshop the time seems to have stood still, not just in its looks but more so in its functioning.
The entire place is laid out with Tram tracks with overhead electric wires. Trams can roll in and enter the sheds, remain stationed under the sheds for varying lengths of time and roll out when required. There are Trams of various ages and looks parked inside these large sheds. The sheds are themselves screaming out loud for repairs, a vintage look that takes back to a time of some bygone era. The fact is Nonapukur workshop of CTC is most definitely a place that has seen better times when it was conceived and set up by the British Tram company. But with the passing of time and the original owners of the company having divested their interest in the company long ago, the place gradually lost its shine. Lack of patronage and indifferent attitude of the current owners, the State Government of West Bengal, it is a surprise that the Nonapukur workshop still functions.
Fact is, Nonapukur workshop not only survives but it performs some amazing engineering feats that can only be attributed to the sheer skill, innovation and re-engineering capabilities of the workforce that works there which fuels from the fact that the need of the workforce to survive is linked to the survival of the workshop. It is to be seen to believe.
The workshop plays a central role in annual maintenance of all the Tram cars and most importantly it is the only place where old Tram cars are refurbished and regenerates new life into them. Routine maintenance is mostly carried out at the various Tram depots where the Tram cars are parked during the night or their non-operating periods. The Tram cars are brought to this central workshop for their annual maintenance where it goes through a thorough check for any wear and tear.
There are about eight separate workshops in the entire premise. Each one is earmarked for a special activity. This is understandable because each Tram car that comes in for an annual maintenance or facelift do not require the services of all the individual shops. These eight shops are:
- Carriage & Wagon Shop: First time visitors in the premise would start their guided tour from this shop. The people working at Nonapukur fondly calls this as CNW which is an abbreviated form of its full name. All repair, refurbishment of the Tram carriage and the wagon is carried out here. The CNW shop undertakes denting work on the Tram body, peeling of old paint and repainting of the body, fixing of all new parts on the carriage and generally all the final assembly work. This is where an old Tram car gets a new look before it is put back to service and rolls out once again to start a new journey of its reincarnated life all over again.
On one side of the CNW shop is where the steel undercarriage of the Tram body is repaired. This is a complicated and intricately built heavy steel structure on which the body of the Tram sits. The wheels of the Tram car also get attached to the wagon or undercarriage. This undercarriage goes through wear and tear over its life of operation and is repaired, refurbished and repainted with bitumen before final assembly.
CNW is also the shop where a completely new Tram car is built and assembled from scratch before it is launched with much fanfare rekindling the excitement and enthusiasm for a heritage that makes every Calcutta resident proud.
- Wheel Shop: The wheel shop is adjacent to CNW and rightly so. The wheels are such an integral part of a Tram car. The wheels are heavy and made of special alloy forged and machined much like the rail car wheels. The wheels go through lot of wear and tear while running the Tram cars and loses its dimensions and at some point, needs refurbishing. A steel tire is welded on to worn out wheel and then machined and hand ground to give the required thickness. This involves extraordinary skills and the capability of the wheel shop fitters and workmen are simply astounding.
- Electric Shop: Next to the wheel shop is the electric shop. This is where the heart of the Tram car is looked after, the Motor. The motor for a Tram car is a D C Motor and is housed in a steel cage which remains concealed when installed. The electric shop not only repairs the motor stator it also makes the new windings in house for installation. The electric shop also repairs the Controller System which is unique for a Tram car. The Controller of a Tram car is still imported from Fuji Company of Japan. All other electric parts and fixtures are mostly outsourced and fitted at the CNW shop.
- Machine Shop: The Machine Shop is another amazing area. This is a large area housing lathes of many varieties and makes, shapers, drillers and any many more. The machines are mostly vintage but in good working condition. The machinists are extremely skilled. Here they repair old worn out parts and also make completely new parts with as much precision as can possibly be made in any other place. The parts may be small or big but the master machinists here are capable of producing the required quality.
- Air Brake Section: This is of a relatively smaller work space towards the rear of the machine shop. The Tram cars runs on air brake system. All Air Brake System is repaired and tested in this area which houses compressors and pressure gauges for testing purposes.
- Foundry: The foundry shop is another amazing area. On one half it houses the traditional Smithy facility as well as some drop forge units. On the other half it houses sand casting facilities with furnaces lining the wall nearby.
- Repair Shop: In this area small parts are made and also some steel fabrication work is undertaken.
Wood Work shop (Saw Mill): For a long time, the Tram cars had wooden framework and seats were made of wood. All that work would be done in his wood shop. Though there is a trend nowadays to use plastic for the seating which has made the wood shop largely idle, it still functions as a carpentry yard for any required wood work.
There is one element which is noticeable, as one goes around all the shops, is that none of the technicians, machinists, fabricators, repairers or electrical workers use any drawings of any kind, though the parts that are freshly made or repaired are quite complex by any standards and also require a high degree of precision for them to fit into the entire assembly of a Tram car and enable the system to function efficiently. There are more than 1100 parts in a Tram car that requires periodic repair and replacement over time. It is simply amazing to find that the design, dimensions, tolerances, material compositions and the overall quality required is housed in the memories of the workers.
Also, the most surprising fact is that the management of the workshop is well aware of it and makes it a point to share this most unscientific fact of 21st century with so much pride that one fails to understand if they are naive or uninformed of modern day industrial practices or simply did not care. Apparently, they are all well-educated and qualified and some are even with proper engineering degrees and having experience of working at other well-known engineering companies.
One thing is for sure that the management at the workshop are living in a time zone that is history by any stretch of imagination. There is no process flow-chart for any of the shops, there are no drawings for the parts, there is no quality or health and safety manual of any nature on display. Instructions within the shop workers are mostly verbal in nature. A visitor many notice some handwritten numbers written with chalk on a particular machine where some work is being carried out which is solely as a ready reckoner for the worker working with that machine.
Everyone in the shops know that all the technical information and knowledge that lies in the memories of the workers will one day disappear once these people retire from their jobs and this knowledge would be forgotten and unavailable to the organization. What a loss that would be! Nonapukur workshop and CTC are clearly sliding towards an Alzheimer like situation with the full knowledge that this can not only be slowed but also reversed if only some modern day industrial processes and procedures and practices are adopted by the management, which can be brought on board quite economically and thereby saving the Tram car of Kolkata from possible extinction.
Activists, citizens and Tram enthusiasts are all vocal about why Tram system should not be ignored and why it must be brought to the fore as an accident free, environmental friendly, fuel saving, economical and modern mode of mass city transport. But at the heart of all this argument lies the modernization of Nonapukur workshop without which Kolkata may well become free of a Tram system in the near future as an answer to the prayers of many interested groups with an axe to grind. Kolkata Tram will then only reside in Swaranika.