150 Years of Sri Lankan Railways: Evaluation of the Services from Employee and Customer Perspectives

International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 5, Issue 5, May 2015)

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150 Years of Sri Lankan Railways: Evaluation of the

Services from Employee and Customer Perspectives R.A. Kesavan1, C. Chandrakumar2, A.K. Kulatunga3, J. Gowrynathan4, R.T.D. Rajapaksha5, R.K.G.D.M.

Senewiratne6, and D. Laguleshwaran7

1Faculty of Science, University of Peradeniya, Peradeniya-20400, Sri Lanka 2,3,4,5,6 Department of Production Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Peradeniya, Peradeniya-20400,

Sri Lanka

7ATT Systems (India) Pvt Ltd, Hiriyur, Chitradurga-577532, Karnataka, India

[email protected]

[email protected] [email protected]

[email protected] [email protected]

Abstract— Sri Lankan (Ceylon) Railways celebrated its 150

years of service on 27th December 2014. Though its main

purpose was on freight transport in the early years, the trend

has changed towards passenger transportation afterwards. Sri

Lankan rail network expanded to its peak by 1940s under

British rulers with two rail gauges of broad and narrow.

Later, one of the narrow gauge tracks was removed due to

high operational cost, and longer travel times and part of the

track was replaced with broad gauge. Three decades of

insurgency in the country lead to reduce the full service

covering whole network from time to time and only in this

year full network come to operational with Northern and

Talaimannar line (Connection between South India via Ferry

service) back in service nearly after 23 years of abundance.

With the development of North and Thalaimannar lines with

and upgrading of Southern line with an Indian grant, the

authorities plan to increase the maximum speeds of these

trains at 100kmph. Further, in the last four years, Sri Lanka

Railways moving towards phase lift in rolling stock in order to

improve passenger service. With the introduction of Push Pull

units with AC compartments with air suspension systems and

introduction of luxury compartments served by private

company aiming at foreign tourists are some of them.

However, when compared with many other developing

countries in the region, though Ceylon railways has 150 years

of long history, current level of service, and working facilities

are not at a satisfactory level. Therefore, this research is done

in order to recognize the customer perspective on the current

level of quality and to identify their own grievances as well as

the employee perspective on the current administration and

functionality of Sri Lanka Railways. A survey was carried out

with the assistant of structured questionnaires designed for

different segments and face to face interviews in order to

collect data. Statistical analyses were carried out in order to

find out main complications and their interdependency for the

service degradations and few other areas identified during the

interviews. It is determined that the main issue faced by the

commuters is the poor service due to lack of fund allocations

for the maintenance of existing facilities and from employee

side political interferences to the service has created several

managerial issues, high bureaucracy and lack of adequate

technological inputs have led to poor service. Finally, a

sustainable model has been presented to revamp the service

back on track in order to deliver better service with better

employee satisfaction.

Keywords— Bureaucracy, Degradations, Employee

satisfaction, Freight transportation, Political interferences,

Rolling stock

I. INTRODUCTION

A. Overview of SLR

Sri Lankan Railways, one of the oldest railway systems in

Asia which celebrated its 150 years recently. This service

was introduced by the British rulers in early 19th century

for the planters to bring their harvest from inland to sea

port located in Colombo. Though this mode of

transportation was the main source of transportation for

freight and passengers for few decades, after the

introduction of road based public transportation in late

1940’s revenues form this service declined drastically, and

most for the time operated at a loss. Although this service

has survived for 150 years even at a considerable loss, it

carries the daily commuters to their workplaces, students to

their schools, and tourists to their most admirable

destinations. Today, SLR operates approximately 310

trains, comprising 45 Long-distance and 12 Intercity trains,

and carries appropriately 0.29 million passengers daily. Not

only that but also SLR maintains1420 km of rail tracks, 175

https://www.google.lk/search?q=talaimannar+railway+station&espv=2&biw=1280&bih=841&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=_ZuBVPD5IZLm8AXSx4KQBw&ved=0CBsQsAQ



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locomotives, 900 carriages, and the signaling network. The

administration of SLR is composed with ten sub-

departments, and three units. Distinct heads for each sub-

department have been assigned and they are committed to

report to the General Manager of Railways (GMR), and the

GMR reports to the Secretary of the Ministry of Transport.

B. Historical Evolution

The British, who introduced Rail in Sri Lanka in 1864 to

transport coffee from hill country plantations to Europe via

Colombo city. In 1871, many coffee plantations were

destroyed due to the coffee blight, and it was the period

where tea plantations replaced coffee. Under corporate

ownership and management control by companies, the tea

production flourished, and the need for more railways in

the hill country too grew consequently. In order to transport

tea from hill country to Colombo, and labour, machinery,

rice, etc., from Colombo to hill country, the British

expanded their railway tracks by another 100 miles.

Emerging requirement for agricultural developments

further increased the need to install railway lines in the

West, South West, and North West of the island. Though

railways was initiated in Sri Lanka for the trade purposes,

today railways has a prominent place as transport media of

this tiny island. Main Line to Kandy was extended to the

historical city of Anuradhapura, went further north to

Kankesanturai and west to Talaimannar. This extension

was carried out mainly to bring South Indian labours for

the tea and rubber plantations, and also for importing rice

and other food items. Prevalence of the natural harbour in

Trincomalee justified the reason to lay railway line to the

dry zone at that time. These lines were laid with light

section rails, since the narrow gauge section to serve the

rubber plantations East of Colombo, known at the Kelani

Valley Line. A similar branch, in upcountry was laid from

Nanu-Oya on the Main Line through very difficult terrain

to serve the tea plantations around Nuwara-Eliya.

Even with the development of land road based

transportation after 1940’s Sri Lankan railways delivered

service with many changes which included dieselization of

motive power in 1950s, change to colour light signalling

and doubling the

lines etc. Figure

01 shows the

timeline of the

significant events

which were

happening over

the 150 years. Though there are

some physical

infrastructure

developments in

the recent past, the

SLR has been

operated with leap

frog development

and the gap

between revenue

collection and

operational

expenditure has

being increased

over the last few

decades in a

negative way.

During this period

there were no

structural changes

carried out

to the organization. Figure 1: Timeline for the development of SLR [1, 7, and 18]



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However, similar to other government organizations,

political interventions and trade unionization has being

increased significantly.

II. REVIEWS ON LITERATURE – OPEN & CLOSE DOMAINS

It is noticeable that there very few research works have

been carried out in railway industry in the recent past.

Though there are many publications available in this

discipline related to Sri Lanka dating back to 1920’s [1] up

to 1960’s, it has declined afterwards and the latest research

paper published in Sri Lankan Engineering Journal was in

2004, this shows the interest among the professionals and

academics about this service in the recent past.

A. Way and Works

The very first paper was published in 1922 by Simeon [2]

discussed on traversing of Eastern railway line and the

remedies taken to minimize sharp curves and gradients in

low country. Further this work discusses some complexities

occurred when surveying last segment of Up country line.

In the same year, another technical note was presented by

Bowen [3] on doubling the main line between Ragama and

Rambukkana. This paper highlights the all civil works

which includes further levelling of gradients, strengthening

embankments, bridge and culvert work and duplicating a

tunnel and reconstruction of several stations to

accommodate dual lines and further improvements on the

existing track as well. Also Bowen [3] presented the main

port extension line to facilitate direct link between up

country line toward harbour where most freight traffic was

existed. Further, they expected to ease the traffic between

two main stations where most commuter trains ply. The

Eastern line extension work was also presented by the same

author [4] in 1925, the complexities due to flood plains and

some topological issues in several sections were

highlighted. Further, he has revealed the future

developments they had considered even at that time, which

is very much rare to find presently. Maintenance issues of

railway track for the safety of passengers has been

highlighted by Silva in 1965[5]. In this he has mentioned

the complexity of track maintenance issue without much

effect to the normal service and special cases how way and

works department handle the safety of the passengers etc.

In addition, there were two cases of repairing of summit

tunnel [6] and bridge maintenance issues [7].

B. Operational Aspects

With respect to operational aspects, some considerations

had been made to increase the train speeds was presented

by De Silva [8] in 1969, where he compared some of the

world leaders in speedy railway services in Japan and

France at that time and Sri Lankan level of service and

level of investment required for the improvement of track

and feasibility issues for transform to that standards. In

addition to this, Silva has presented a paper on

modernization aspects of Ceylon Government Railways in

1970. In this work, he has mentioned about the steps taken

in motive power, way and works as well as signaling sub

departments to cater the increasing demand and savings

made due to the changes etc. [9]. After this study, there

were no account on the overall development of CGR up to

now. Widanapathiranage et al. proposed a Bus and Rail

choice model for the Colombo metropolitan region in their

manuscript [2]. This model contained four variables

namely: a difference in passenger waiting time for the

mode of travel, a difference in in-vehicle travel time, bus

and rail passenger loadings, and a difference in passenger

walking time to mode.

C. Rolling Stock

The first account on rolling stock and motive power of

CGR was presented by Head in 1928 [10] which includes

the developments took place in rolling stock to cater the

long distance and suburban services with steam

locomotives, and steam rail cars. An overview of Diesel

electric motive power was presented by Freer in 1939 [11].

This study provides detailed explanation of global picture

of dieselization of railways, and level of adaptations and

future plans of CGR at that time. An overall infrastructure

development work was presented by Head in 1931 [12]. In

1948, Rampala [13] had presented a technical paper on

rating of steam locomotives operated in CGR at that time.

Further, Black, and Rajagopal in 1956 [12] presented an

overview of CGR at that time including some changes took

place to the buildings and maintenance shops etc. After a

gap of couple of decades, in 1999, Wijesekara [14]

presented some of the innovative project, which was done

to convert normal passenger bus to be operated in railway

tracks to replace low demand lines. Later in 2002, same

author presented the complexity of rolling stock

maintenance in the post era of steam rolling stock [15]. The

author has proposed a sustainable model which can be

adapted for maintenance, and sustenance of service to a

developing country which does not have more funding to

acquire high tech rolling stock from developed world.

D. Signalling

First account on signalling was presented by Brendon in

1921 [16] on Mechanical Signalling in CGR. In there,

Brendon explains how mechanical Signalling system works



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and complexities involved in that technology in detail. In

1924, Shillitoe [17] presented on track circulating to

prevent errors made by signalmen. The complexities of

implementing that technology is highlighted in that paper.

Anketell, carried out a study on Block system, which was

used for signalling. He discussed several types of block

systems like: block working on double lines-Lock and

Block, Two-position Lock and Block, and Three-position

Lock and Block [18] which were used in CGR at that time.

The colour light signalling system was presented by

Seneviratna in 1960 [19]. An overview of colour light

system and adaptation of that to local context was

presented there. After Seneviratna's work in 1960, there are

no any other research work on signalling related to CGR.

Based on the existing literature it is known that there are no

studies have been carried out related to the present status of

railway service in Sri Lanka for nearly a half a century.

Therefore, the emerging need to carry out a study is

identified with the following aims, and objectives.

Evaluate the developments related to service expansion –

It was required to study the expansion of the prevailing

Sri Lanka Railways (SLR) in order to carry further

studies to determine the possible areas for development

and expansions.

Investigate customer, and employee perspective about

the organization and services – Studying the perspectives

of the stakeholders of SLR is very vital, since it reveals

the actual scenario and the requirements. The analyses of

the perspectives will support to design very propitious

Sri Lanka Railway.

Propose a mechanism to improve the current service and

maintenance work – It is the final and the most important

objective of this study; proposing a mechanism to

improve the standards of the prevailing service and

maintenance, in order to create a better SLR.

III. METHODOLOGY

The research methodology consists of several steps

spanning mainly in two branches. Initially, in order to

identify the current level of service and employee

perspective on SLR, interviews and surveys were carried

out. Structured questionnaires were designed to cover

commuters and diverse employee categories of the SLR

Operations departmental staff which includes maintenance

foremen, station masters, drivers etc. In addition to this

process related technical literature also surveyed in order to

find out how service has evolved over a century and what

was the level of planning in yesteryears especially under

the British rulers. Later, primary data collected from the

survey was analyzed statistically to identify

interdependencies and relevant aspects raised in both

passenger and employee perspectives were tested for co-

relationships. After critical reviewing of the literature

published so far and based on the conclusions of the

statistical analysis, a sustainable restructuring model was

developed for the future development of the service.

A. Data/ Information Collection

A questionnaire-based interview methodology is used to

gather information from the stake holders. Interviewees are

separated into several major groups and they are even

categorized into sub-groups.

B. Design & Development of Questionnaire

Questionnaire is designed in order to receive the exact

perceptions of each stakeholders, in order to provide the

meticulous depiction of the scenario. Initially, certain areas

for each stakeholder are chosen. For each sub-category of

employees questions are designed individually. Working

conditions, fund allocations, services, working hours, and

their pay are the main areas which are taken into

consideration for the station masters. Questions for the

drivers are designed based on the factors like: recruitment

procedure, accommodation facilities, maintenance services,

and their salaries. Training, maintenance services, and

service hours are the key areas, which are clarified from the

foremen. The key areas which are considered for

passengers namely: the way of use, frequency of use,

journey duration, purpose of use, time schedules, on-board

Figure 2: Proposed methodology for the study



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facilities, infrastructure facilities and security. Questions

related to day passes, and monthly passes are questioned at

the commuters, and students. From all the stakeholders,

questions related to further improvements are questioned.

IV. STATISTICAL ANALYSES

In order to develop a sustainable model for an improved

SLR, it is determined that using statistical analytical

methods would plot the variations, and relationships

thoroughly among the factors like: passengers, costs,

income, cargo transportation etc. with time.

A. SLR Employees related Analyses – Determination of

Employees’ Salary Satisfaction of SLR by Fitting a Model

A primary (full) model is fitted with the suspected factors

that may relate to the satisfaction of the employees. The

Generalized Linear Model (GLM) has been fitted with

satisfaction of the basic salary as a response variable and

factors namely: improvement in service during their service

time, accommodation, and rest are considered as

explanatory variables. Since the p-value of the intercept

and improvement in service during their service time are

not statistically significant, backward elimination

procedure has been used to remove the most insignificant

variable as well as to retain the significant variables. This

procedure is recursively continued until all response

variables in the model are statistically significant. Finally,

from the backward elimination procedure a model has been

fitted to discover the factors which relate to satisfaction of

employees regarding their basic salary. The saturated

model is given below in table 2.

TABLE I : SUMMARY OF COEFFICIENT IN FULL MODEL

Variable Estimate Std. error T-value P-value

Accommodation 0.16637 0.09790 1.699 0.009

Rest -0.07965 0.09937 -0.802 0.004

TABLE II : SUMMARY OF COEFFICIENT IN SATURATED MODEL

B. Passengers related Analyses

i. Determination of Passengers’ Satisfaction of SLR

by Fitting a Model

This test is performed in order to determine the factors,

which affect the passengers’ satisfaction of SLR. The

Generalized Linear Model (GLM) has been fitted with

satisfaction of SLR as a response variable and factors

namely: security, accidents, mobile traders, infrastructure,

seats, commodity travel, parking facilities, nearest bus stop,

obtaining ticket, reaching and arriving trains on time are

considered as explanatory variables.

TABLE III : SUMMARY OF COEFFICIENT IN FULL MODEL

Variable Estimate Std.

error

T -

value

P -

value

Intercept 0.77957 0.58080 1.342 0.18467

Security 0.08422 0.12018 0.701 0.48621

Accidents -0.34453 0.12179 -2.829 0.00637

Mobile traders -0.05547 0.11517 -0.482 0.63186

Infrastructure 0.19428 0.15094 1.287 0.20310

Comfortably of seats 0.15681 0.12520 1.252 0.21534

Seating facility 0.12676 0.10494 1.208 0.23188

Commodity travel 0.11779 0.10685 1.102 0.27480

Bus stop 0.27480 0.12292 0.721 0.47377

Parking facility -0.07202 0.11525 -0.625 0.53443

Reaching time -0.02237 0.14452 -0.155 0.87754

Arrival time 0.26665 0.13704 1.946 0.05646

Obtaining ticket -0.08130 0.12389 -0.656 0.51420

Variable Estimate Std.

error T-value P-value

Intercept 0.01536 0.11490 0.134 0.894

Improvement in

service 0.05080 0.09722 0.556 0.582

Accommodation 0.16229 0.09910 1.638 0.011

Rest -0.07366 0.10088 -0.730 0.004

Figure 3: Stakeholders of the study



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Since, p value of most of the variables except accidents,

and arrival time are not statistically significant; backward

elimination procedure has been used to remove the most

insignificant variables as well as to retain the significant

variables. This procedure is recursively continued, until all

the response variables in the model become statistically

significant. Finally, from the backward elimination

procedure a model has been fitted to discover the factors,

which relate to passengers’ satisfaction of SLR. The

saturated model is given below,

TABLE IV : SUMMARY OF COEFFICIENT IN SATURATED MODEL

Variable Estimate Std. error T value P value

Intercept 0.6796 0.2927 2.322 0.0230

Security 0.2408 0.1024 2.352 0.0213

Accidents -0.2364 0.1098 -2.152 0.0347

Comfortably

of seats 0.2283 0.1051 2.171 0.0331

Arrival time 0.2495 0.1013 2.463 0.0161

ii. Karl Pearson Chi-Squared Test

This test is used to clarify that the suspected relationships

among inter-related variables namely: infrastructure, arrival

time, reaching time, obtaining tickets, preferring online

tickets, types of tickets, accidents, mobile traders,

comfortably of seats, and security.

TABLE V : RESULTS OF PAIRWISE DEPENDENCY

Variables P- value Decision

Infrastructure Comfortably of

seats 0.0004 Dependent

Type of Tickets Obtaining Tickets 0.9222 Independent

Arrival Time Reaching time 2.264e-

07 Dependent

Obtaining tickets Preferring online

ticket 0.4093 Independent

Accidents Security 0.0404 Dependent

Mobile Traders Security 0.0135 Dependent

C. Freight Transportation and Fuel Consumption

Freight and cargo transportation is one of the services

provided by SLR from the past. It is also noticed that the

freight transportation has been bringing notable amount of

income from time to time. Though there are enough income

gained through freight transportation it is observed the

freight transportation has reduced. Table 6 shows the

revenues, and expenditures of SLR in last decade. It is very

obvious that SLR has been suffering with poor turnover.

Almost everyone stated that the training they receive are in

satisfactory levels. 75% of them revealed that they have

enough resting time between two consecutive service

shifts, and their mean service time is approximately 48

hours per week. They too revealed that the political

interferences have a negative impact on the services and the

growth of SLR. They also preferred that the corruption

should be eliminated, proper trainings should be provided

to handle M-9 engines, signalling systems should be

improved further, rules and regulations should be revised,

number of trains and carriages should be increased, and the

railway tracks should be further improved to meet up the

future challenges. From the GLM, the resulting model for

the employees’ satisfaction about their basic salary can be

shown as following,

Therefore, it can be inferred from the above equation that

the employees’ satisfaction is mainly depends on factors

namely: accommodation and rest. So, this concludes that

the employees demand for increased wages and they desire

for sufficient rest.

D. Passengers

From the GLM, the resulting model for the passengers’

satisfaction can be shown as following,

Therefore, it can be inferred from the above equation that

the Passengers’ satisfaction is mainly depends on factors

namely: security, accidents, seats, and arrival time.

Meanwhile, the satisfaction negatively depends on

accidents. So, this concludes that the passengers desire a

railway system with minimal accidents, and also

passengers concern about the better seating facilities, safe

railway crossings, and acceptable time schedules.

From the Karl Pearson Chi-Squared test, it can be derived

that certain variables depend on each other and while some

are not. Infrastructure facility does not depend on

comfortably of the seats. This implies the necessity for the

Satisfaction of basic salary = 0.16637*Accommodation

– 0.0795*Rest (1)

Satisfaction = 0.6796 + 0.2408*Security -

0.2364*Accidents + 0.2283*Seats + 0.2495*Arrival

time (2)



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government to improve the infrastructure facility

government has rather than concentrating specifically only

on seating facilities. Obtaining tickets without many

troubles is a positive sign irrespective to the types of

tickets. Accidents, and mobile traders directly contributing

in railway accidents mostly. From Kolmogorov Smirnov

Normality test, it can be expounded that the duration of the

journey does not follow a normal distribution. Therefore, it

is hard to conclude about the significance of the journey

duration. Passenger responses reveal that 55% of the

passengers revealed that in order to improve the standards

of the SLR services, the government should increase the

carriages, trains and journeys. Peoples’ opinion towards

Express railways - 35.95% of the passengers greeted the

introduction of express railways. But 9% of them are a

dissatisfied with prevailing express railways service.

Further, 4% of them worried about the delay of reaching

the destinations, which emphasize the necessities to have

standard express railways. Peoples’ opinion regarding

online ticketing - 47% of the passengers responded

positively about online ticketing procedure. In contrast, 6%

of them disagreed, saying that the online procedure is not

applicable in all kind of ticketing, especially in 3rd class.

So it can be inferred that the passengers request the

authorities to develop the online ticketing procedure further

more in such a way that it is applicable in all kind and all

class of ticketing procedure. Passengers experienced

regarding railway accidents - The positive side about

railway accidents in Sri Lanka is that 74% of the

passengers stated that they are not experienced with any

kind of railway accidents. Since 26% of the passengers

have prone to accidents, which is significantly very high,

there can be concluded that the SLR services are not safe in

this island. Then passengers were asked what are the

suggestions to reduce the these kind of accidents in future,

15% of the passengers proposed that the maintenance

should be done for carriages and railway tracks properly,

whereas other answers do not have any significant impact

to this question. This indicates that proper maintenance can

significantly reduce the railway related accidents.

E. Operational Costs and Revenues

Operations cost of SLR plays an important role when

deciding its stability in the country economically. Fuel

consumption is considered for this study to determine the

quality of operations and maintenance. Consumption of

diesel, and lubrication oil shows an increasing pattern from

2000, except 2009. Table 7 shows the consumption of fuel

and lubricants. From table 6, and 7 it can be inferred that

SLR has a significant gap between operations expenditures

and revenue collection, which has being increased over the

recent years drastically. Even though data of last decade is

only represented in figures like: table 7 and figure 4,

previous records too reveal same pattern over the decades.

When some of the main operational expenditure were

concerned, though they almost remain same over the years

other expenditures have increased considerably impacting

more gap between incomes over expenditure. Therefore it

can be infer that excessive operations costs have negative

impacts on the quality of SLR since it cannot invest even

for day to day maintenance requirements from own

recoveries.

It is blatant that the SLR is running in loss in recent times.

Figure 4 clearly shows that the working expenditures are

raising day by day, while the total revenue is not in

satisfactory level. This morbid situation of SLR can be

related with the stakeholders of SLR directly and indirectly.

Employees are attached to SLR, since it is a secured job.

Most of them are concerned about their pay, and they

desire their short shifts. These two factors directly affect

the efficiency of them and the quality of services they

provide. Political interferences and unionizations have

indirect impacts on the effectiveness of the employees in

recruiting, and trainings. Unrevised organizational

structures, objectives, and goals never bolster the growth of

SLR indeed. Passengers are dissatisfied with the standards

of services when comparing to the services provided by

other Asian countries. Unawareness and improper

arrangements to obtain online tickets have frustrated the

passengers.

Tedious travelling durations, poor maintenance, lack of

infrastructure facilities, and improper time schedules have

reduced the interest on rail journeys. Table 7 shows that the

maintenance costs have increased drastically in recent

years, which directly has a negative impact on the total

revenue of SLR. Short shifts, and reduced working hours

are one of the reasons for recruiting excess employees for

SLR which increases the operational costs considerably.

Therefore, the SLR could not be able to allocate enough

funds for the maintenance of the carriages, and locomotives

in their budget. It is apparent that in order to overcome

these problems the higher officials of SLR have to revise

their organization structure, do strategic planning when

fund allocating, look for available opportunities, bridge the

gaps, maximize usage of resources, avoid political

interventions and unionizations etc. These solutions have

been proposed in figure 6.



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V. CONCLUSIONS

Based on the previous analysis, it can be revealed that there

are two main reasons behind the deterioration of service

and these two are interrelated as well. Both reasons

namely: human resources related and technical related

aspects are caused due to poor administration. When

inquired reasons for the worst scenario, the main offender

is the politicization and unionization, which interdict taking

technically sound and most appropriate decisions at right

time. These politicization and unionizations also affect the

discipline of the employees within the organization. Poor

discipline directly affect the employee morale by reducing

their job satisfaction significantly. Meanwhile,

unawareness and lack of visions of the top management

and higher official have dominant impact on SLR and its

operations. This lack of vision includes providing

insufficient or poor quality training which is a loss to SLR,

while nobody is gaining any knowledge at all. Improper

acquisitions increase the maintenance costs considerably.

Poor job satisfaction and excess maintenance costs affect

the performance of the operations. This leads to poor

service quality and reduces revenues consequently.

Perhaps these factors even go deep into a level where

higher officials of the administration are also appointed

based on political affiliation. Even though majority of

employee categories highly deepened on technical

qualifications and skills, presently due to some actions of

the trade unions SLR could not recruit for lower and

middle level technicians and only recruitments they can do

at the moment are for the engineer levels in the technical

side and casual labours in the bottom level. However, other

services related positions namely: drivers, assistants,

station masters, guards etc. are recruited without much

troubles. Further, due to large number of trade unions and

their actions, harmony among different categories of

employees especially those involved in operations

presently at very poor level. Due to this several avoidable

delays exist.

Further, decision making time has increased considerably

due to presently available high bureaucracy. Therefore in

conclusion these issues are summarized and pictured as in

Figure 5. Since, Sri Lanka is currently moving towards

constitutional changes with re-establishing independent

commissions etc., this research propose a sustainable model

starting with restructuring the administration and almost re-

engineering the business processes of the entire

organization.

TABLE VI : REVENUES & EXPENDITURES OF SLR IN LAST 10 YEARS

Category

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Revenue from

passengers

Ordinary (Mn.) 994 1148 1385 1586 2014 2490 2363 2445 2811 3557

Season passes

(mn.) 271 331 441 447 699 777 749 794 517 930

Receipts from

goods traffic (mn.) 260 270 393 314 364 337 420 430 447 443

Gross receipts (mn.) 1678 1958 2491 2999 3671 4020 4018 4235 4952 5423

Total revenues (mn.) 3203 3707 4710 5346 6748 7624 7550 7904 8727 10353

Working

expenditure (mn.) 4328 5463 6473 7297 8225 8788 7191 8295 8648 10586

Annual turnover (mn.) -1125 -1756 -1763 -1951 -1477 -1164 359 -391 79 -233

Goods handled in

n. Tones (Mn. Tones) 1.6 1.6 1.6 1.7 1.7 1.6 2.7 1.9 2.1 1.9

Passenger

Ordinary (km

in mn.) 3170 2767 1875 2147 2932 2964 2814 2912 3340 4235

Season passes

(km in mn.) 1510 1589 1744 1773 1749 1604 1539 1663 1699 2023

Figure 4: Annual turnover - SLR



9

TABLE VII : CONSUMPTION OF FUEL & LUBRICANTS BY LOCOMOTIVES

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

Diesel litres/

engine km 3.37 3.31 3.63 3.69 3.30 3.22 3.59 4.38 4.01 2.68

Lubrication oil

litres/ engine km 0.07 0.12 0.07 0.08 0.07 0.07 0.08 0.07 0.07 0.34

The sustainable model is built

based on both human resources

(HR) related factors and

revenues. In HR aspects

political interventions and the

conflicts among the unions have

to be reduced in order to bring

peace and harmony among

several categories of employees.

When considering the revenues,

it is required to find out the

possibilities for expansions,

where additional incomes can

be brought to SLR. Among such

possibilities cargo

transportation, expansion of the

length of the loops are

significant. Since cargo and

freight transportation played a

major role in the overall revenue

of SLR in the past, it is fruitful

if the strategic planners consider

on improving the cargo and

freight transportation. With the

increasing population and the

increasing motor traffic

commuters and other daily

passengers prefer common

transportation.

By expanding the loop length

SLR can earn more revenue

through transporting more commuters in

future. Good HR practices and sufficient revenues will lead

SLR to provide excellent service quality and better

maintenance while satisfying its passengers and employees.

These suggestions have been included in figure 6 as the

sustainable model for SLR to build up a better SLR.

Figure 5: Reasons behind Poor Revenues and Service Quality



10

References

[1] Saman J. Widanapathiranage and Amal S. Kumarage, “Bus and

Rail Choice Model for the Colombo Metropolitan Region”, Annual

Transaction of Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka, pp. 1- 9, 2004.

[2] L.S.B. Simeon, “Railway Location in Thick Jungle”, Transaction of the Engineering Association of Ceylon, pp. 47-57, 1922.

[3] M. Cole Bowen, “Note on Visit to the Harbour Rail Extension”, Transaction of the Engineering Association of Ceylon, pp. 145-147,

1922.

[4] M. Cole Bowen, “Notes on Visit to the Batticaloa and Trincomalie

Light Railway”, Transaction of the Engineering Association of Ceylon, pp. 66 -77, 1925.

[5] L.S. De Silva, “Maintaining Safe Railway Track for the Travelling

Public”, Transaction of the Institution of Engineers, Ceylon, pp. 31-47, 1965.

[6] Priyal De Silva, “Repairs to Summit (Railway) Tunnel on the Up-

Country Line”, Annual Transaction of Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka, pp. 15-18, 1981.

[7] Conrad Gribble, Stresses in Railway Bridges, Transaction of the

Institution of Engineers, Ceylon, pp.264-287, 1951.

[8] L.S.De Silva, “Some consideration in

running high speed trains on the Ceylon government railway”,

Transaction of the Institution of

Engineers, Ceylon, pp. 91-108, 1969.

[9] E.W.Head, “Modern motive power Ceylon government railway”,

Transactions of the Engineering Association of Ceylon, pp. 183-238,

1928.

[10] E.W.Head, “Modern motive power

Ceylon government railway”, Transactions of the Engineering

Association of Ceylon, pp. 183-238,

1928.

[11] H.W.F.Freer, “Diesel rail traction in Ceylon”, Transactions of the

Engineering Association of Ceylon, pp. 57-73, 1939.

[12] E.Black, P.Rajagopal, “Ceylon

government railway”, Transactions of the Engineering Association of

Ceylon, pp. 159-164, 1956.

[13] B.D.Rampala, “Rating of

Locomotive”, Transactions of the Engineering Association of Ceylon,

pp. 87-91, 1948.

[14] P.P.Wijesekera, “Rail bus project – future plans”, Annual Transaction of

Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka,

pp. 5-15, 1999.

[15] P.P.Wijesekera, “Maintenance of rolling stock- Sri Lankan Railway”, Annual Transaction of Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka,

pp.87 -96, 2002.

[16] F.E.Brandon, “Mechanical Railway Signalling”, Transactions of the Institution of Engineers, Ceylon, pp. 110-130, 1921.

[17] Hohn Shillitoe, “Track Circuiting”, Transactions of the Engineering

Association of Ceylon, pp. 141-168, 1924.

[18] C.R.Anketell, “Block signalling on the Ceylon government

Railway”, Transactions of the Engineering Association of Ceylon,

pp. 105 -117, 1938

[19] T.W.U.Seneviratna, “Colour light signalling and centralized traffic control”, Transactions of the Institution of Engineers, Ceylon, pp.

199-212, 1960.

Figure 6: Proposed Sustainable Model for SLR



11

Documents

150 Years of Sri Lankan Railways: Evaluation of the Services from Employee and Customer Perspectives