Hey Guys

[jareda.rahul]

I am ASTE (Assistant Signal and Telecom Engineer), RDSO working for Indian Railways. I have completed almost 3 years of service (including 1 & 1/2 years' training) and i am thinking about taking up the exams in 2016. I would appreciate if anybody could guide me where to start or what is the right time to  appear for the exam. Is it too soon for me ? Would also appreciate if somebody can provide the names/details of the people who have cleared the exam in Indian Railways . Just a little background, I have a fairly good knowledge of the logical concepts of signalling as operated on Indian Railways but I lack in knowledge about varied practices . I am not very good at telecom portion though can understand the basic principles.  Thats all, thanks in advance for the help.

[PJW]

I am ASTE (Assistant Signal and Telecom Engineer), RDSO working for Indian Railways. I have completed almost 3 years of service (including 1 & 1/2 years' training) and i am thinking about taking up the exams in 2016. I would appreciate if anybody could guide me where to start or what is the right time to  appear for the exam. Is it too soon for me ? Would also appreciate if somebody can provide the names/details of the people who have cleared the exam in Indian Railways . Just a little background, I have a fairly good knowledge of the logical concepts of signalling as operated on Indian Railways but I lack in knowledge about varied practices . I am not very good at telecom portion though can understand the basic principles.  Thats all, thanks in advance for the help.

Sounds about the right time to start on the exam to me.
However I would advise doing only two modules in 2016.

It does of course depend on the quality, width and depth of training and experience (and yes I am primarily thinking of the UK context when giving that advice).  I do suspect that the Indian Railway training regime may be more aligned to what it used to be in British Railways some 30 years ago than the modern UK world (i.e. potentially more structured and through at imparting good basic knowledge); also being a "railway" then the environment is probably less fragmented and affords people a wider experience.

If you have not yet discovered it, I suggest you read the thread & download the attachments of http://irseexam.co.uk/thread-134-post-6001.html#pid6001


Sounds like you are more of a Signal Engineer than Telecoms and that is fine- you do not have to attempt mod 4 or mod 6.  
If a lot of your experience is site based then I suggest

• that mod 3 (Principles) and mod 5 (Applications) might be the ones to do first as probably most aligned to your "day job".  
  
• Alternatively mod 2 for "Signalling the Layout"- the Study Pack is by far the most detailed, but on the other hand whereas it has been written as generally as possible, all the detailed sections relate to the UK. I know not much about Indian Railway practices, but enough to know that some things are quite different; a challenge when doing this module to IR practices is what to do when there is something in the specification (such as the headway demand) that isn't something for which there is an IR answer.   Certainly not impossible to do it to IR practices, but I think having some slight awareness of UK practice so that you can at least recognise what is being asked and can then respond to the examiner by doing the closest equivalent and explaining.  For example may be asked to provide signalling that can deliver a train every 2.5 minutes, but with a concept of signalling each station according to its importance and then relatively long sections between them perhaps divided with a intermediate block signal then such a headway isn't going to be achieved.  I believe that some have passed the exam by providing a layout that is strictly non-compliant in this respect, explaining the situation and offering the headway calculations as if UK practice (as a way of achieving those marks, but not relating to the Indian layout).
  
• I guess that you would find mod 1 and particularly mod 7 more of a challenge since I believe that Indian Railway operates in some ways as British Rail did when I joined- a relatively stable, prescriptive group of standards to be applied in the relevant context, justified by the history of previous use and improved gradually as a result of learning of lessons from accidents.  That's not to say that safety is not managed, nor that the railway system is not considered, but probably done far more by wealth of experience etc. than explicitly the processes discussed in these modules, so the terminology may not be familiar and any such considerations which are done may typically be undertaken by the seniors, with little visibility by others who are closer to the operational railway.
  

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We (those of us who run this website) do not have access to details of those who have undertaken the exam to IR practices.  Indeed even the examiners only know of a candidate by their candidate number and they are not explicitly told where in he world the person sat the exam.  There is some information available (some of it very public when the successful results are published in IRSE News) but of course Indian names may actually be anywhere in the world and very many Indians who do the exam in India do so to UK practices because their design work fundamentally is for the UK.  There are some people who I suspect fall into the category which is of interest to you, but firstly I can't be sure and secondly I don't feel that I should share their details unfortunately.  In fact one person (who I met some years ago in Delhi) contacted me a week or two ago saying that they now felt ready to tackle the exam and although they do not work directly for the Indian Railway, they would be doing the exam in accordance with such practices.

One option to try to find some people with similar interests / background would be to look at their "bio" entries- however that does of course suppose that they have put sufficient detail in them when registering or updating subsequently to be useful and I fear that in many cases this will not reveal much.  
[HINT- At the end of another "exam year, this may be a good time for all current participants in the Forum to review their own entries to make sure they reflect current status and have such information added.
"User CP" from grey bar under the top green title header of the Home Page, then on the left-hand margin area select "Edit Profile" which is top entry under the white on black heading of "Your Profile"]  
Actually it is a good idea to make the intended railway's practices an explicit question for new joiners and established Forum users alike, so in response I have now added an extra field to make it easier to record this (you can actually select several from the list).  If not listed use "Other" and enter info in the free format "bio" area and eventually I may add to the list from which others can choose and update your profile to reflect accordingly.


Of course the best way is for those individuals to directly identify themselves, either in this thread or perhaps more privately directly to you via using the PM facility.  Some years ago it looked as if there might have been a group of such people and we did set up an area for them to share Indian specific attempts;  never actually happened but perhaps 2016 will be the year.  See http://irseexam.co.uk/thread-957-post-5241.html#pid5241

[jareda.rahul]

Thanks a lot sir for the information....