Alok Kansal has been appointed as the General Manager of the Western Railway (WR). The post was earlier held by Anil Kumar Gupta, who retired in November, 2019 and Central Railway (CR) General Manager Sanjeev Mittal was holding the additional charge as WR GM since then.
Shri Alok Kansal, a senior officer of the 1983 batch of Indian Railway Service of Engineers (IRSE) has taken over the charge as General Manager of Western Railway on Tuesday, 14thJanuary, 2020. Prior to his posting as General Manager of W. Rly, Shri Alok Kansal served as Principal Executive Director/Civil Engineering (Planning) at Railway Board.
Shri Kansal completed his graduation in Civil Engineering with Gold Medal from University of Roorkee. He also completed his Masters Degree in Structural Engineering with Gold Medal from the same institute. Shri Kansal has went on to serve in several important posts during his career till present. Today, he carries with him rich experience spanning 35 years in Indian Railway Service of Engineers. Shri Alok Kansal was the first Engineering Assistant Officer associated with introduction of first Shatabdi Express, the high speed train of Indian Railways.
He carries varied experience of more than 18 years in Operation & Maintenance of High Speed and heavy density traffic routes. He headed the Engineering branch of Delhi division, the largest division in Indian Railways and had also worked as Chief Track Engineer over Bilaspur and Northern Zones. He played a pivotal role in finalizing the first Vehicular UDFD on Rajdhani routes of Northern Railway, North Central Railway and West Central Railway. He mastered the procurement of Works and Management of largest fleet of Track machines on one of the busiest Northern Railway.
This unique experience is available to a chosen few Civil Engineers only. As a Construction Engineer, Shri Kansal has executed number of important projects of Gauge conversion, Doubling projects on Golden Quadrilateral & ECR. The longest (2 kms) PSC box girder (54.5 m span) over Thane-Creek bridge at Mumbai was executed by him. He also carries a rich experience of Asian Development Bank funded projects and Project Management Consultancy concepts which were started for the first time on IR by RVNL. Amongst the various assignments he has held are as DRM of Nagpur division of South East Central Railway which handled the important operational interchange point which is nerve centre for the freight loading of Bilaspur Zone.
He was actively involved in policy making at Railway Board covering all subjects of Civil Engineering such as elimination of manned level crossings, re-habilitation of bridges which had progressed more than 3 times during this period. He has been instrumental in enhancing the production of long rails, track renewals while he looked as Additional Member /Civil Engineering. Shri Kansal has also authored a book “A-Z for Quality Control and Inspection of Concrete Sleepers”. Shri Kansal’s rich experience spanning 35 years+ in IRSE has seen him deliver the projects that came his way with a structured and disciplined approach.