Women to be driving force behind Aqua Line

NOIDA: When the Aqua Line is launched later this year, one of those in the pilot car will be 23-year-old Nikita Vaid, a BTech graduate who is following the family tradition of serving the railways — albeit this time, it’s a metro train that Nikita will be operating.
Part of the 154-strong contingent being trained as train operators for Noida’s Aqua Line, Nikita is following in the footsteps of her great grandfather Karam Chand Vaid, who was a superintendent at Kalaswala station before Independence, and her grandfather Sudesh Pal who served as a senior section engineer in Indian Railways in Lucknow and Moradabad.

Nikita’s maternal grandfather too served as the chief controller at Moradabad junction. “My younger cousin wants to accompany me inside the cabin to see how I drive (operate the train). I told him that it was not possible but he can travel in the trains that I operate,” says Nikita, who is originally from Moradabad.

Nikita is not the only woman metro operator. There are at least 50 other young women, currently undergoing vigorous training to operate the trains. An MTech holder, 25-year-old Priyanka Singh from Ghazipur in Varanasi, who topped the exams at the end of their training period that landed her the profile of a train operator, says she wanted to be in a government sector like her father for job security. “Some of my family members did think that it would be very challenging and tough, but I told them that there is no steering that I have to handle and it was a very comfortable job in an air-conditioned cabin. They then realised that it was a very good job,” she said. All the metro rail operators were offered jobs in February this year by Noida Metro Rail Corporation (NMRC) after almost a year of written and psychological tests, followed by interviews.

Deepika Tripathi (23) from Allahabad, another operator, explains that the psychological tests were important as it examines their observation skills, alertness, speed and accuracy.

“Of course, it is a very big responsibility. It does come to our mind that we would be operating a train with over 3,000 passengers at a time. But we have been trained exactly for this,” she says.

According to NMRC officials, all the train operators underwent a four-month intensive training where they were trained in station control, crowd control, revenue management before finally giving them a chance to operate from the simulator — a virtual train that provides a moving experience exactly like the metro.

“The first practical training is on a simulator after which the trainees undergo training inside the trains on the depots,” says Sukhram, one of the DMRC trainers. “While the system is designed in a way that they cannot breach the maximum speed limit of 95 kilometre per hour, the operators can drive up to a maximum speed of 85 kilometre per hour,” he adds.

The operators are also being trained by Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) staff, including Meenakshi Bhoj, one of the two first female drivers of DMRC.

“We are all very proud of what we are going to do,” says Priyanka.