"Craiova railway station will become the escutcheon of the entire railway department

Interview with Mr. Viorel SCURTU Manager of the Craiova CFR Department

Rail journal: What means for you this new position and what were the first decisions you made?

Viorel Scurtu: This new position is the challenge of reaching the maximum professional and efficiency level just as I tried to do in the previous job positions I had before.
The first decision I had to make and to apply was that of pointing out my responsibilities in this new position. Together with the entire managerial team I established the working way to insure a good activity process in the Craiova CFR Department.

RJ: What do you think determined the management of the CFR-SA to propose you for this position?

VS: I cannot say exactly what professional qualities I have that determined the management of the CFR-SA to choose me for this position. I believe though that my well knowledge of the Department as well as my implication in all exploiting activities no matter their field represented a point in plus for this choice.

RJ: What makes it so different for the Craiova CFR Department in comparison to the other departments of the CFR-SA?

VS: CF Craiova Department is very large - it spreads its rail-tracks and stations throughout counties as: Dolj, Arges, Gorj, Olt, mehedinti, Teleorman, etc., covering completely the entire relief areas with the implying exploitation specifics. We have rails and installations on the Danube, Jiu, Olt narrow paths, in the plane zone of the Oltenia and in the harbor cities of the Danube.
Throughout the CF Craiova Department area there operates almost a third of the total fright traffic of the Romanian railways, most of the time cool transport, because of the geographic position.

RJ: What are the main priorities?

VS: These priorities are practically divided into two segments. The first one would be represented by the human resources domain, where our preoccupation is centralized on the realization of a perfect symbiosis between the professional training using the classical educative systems and the improvement of the professional training by proper training and testing techniques. I believe that only by a continuous improvement of our professional level we will be able to guarantee the progress for our future railway system.
The second one would be the long-term priorities in our department activity, represented by the railway modernisation process not only in the strict meaning of the word-as technical working at the infrastructure, etc, but also the "modernization" of the personnel's mentality.
Provided with a good training in correlation with the new informational need in the field, the personnel educates its own way of thinking and thus, it learns easier to apply the new and more efficient technology.

RJ: What other works do you intend to perform until the end of this year?

VS: Our project scale is large taking into account the fact that the Department's activity scale is also a large one, too. Each field (traffic, rails, installations, patrimony, etc), each division within all these fields has its own projects and priorities. This time of the year we work especially to the improvement of the image and of the travelers' comfort. This means equipment for other features of the production spaces and the areas the workers are stationed to. For the rails and the installations this means a contribution brought by new technologies, mainly mechanizing and secondly a better selection of materials because we are poor enough not to use cheap things that will become obsolete in one or two years. I strongly believe that I am not the only one who thinks this.
Strictly for the infrastructure, it is important that we follow two things. We have to start repairing the 100 route - Videle-Orsova. We have to do more than just repair. We will have to completely rehabilitate the route to improve the speed rate and the safety in operation. I hope that September will be the month we will start the works on the Videle-Rosiori route.
A second big project that I hope to start this year is the capital repairing of the bride over the river Olt at Lotru, on the 201 line, near the Lotru station. This particular bridge is in urgent need of repairs and it is a big project.
As every year, we also have smaller projects that have already started or they are about to start - rebuilding CED installations, capital repairs for stations like Turnu Severin, Filiasi. We hope that this year will be the final one for the documentation for the Craiova station. We will make the Craiova station the escutcheon of the entire railway department, as it should be.

R.J. What other future plans do you have?

V.S.: Honestly, I haven't made any future plans yet. I have been occupying this position for a short while now and the programmes already in operation demand almost all of my time. When the fall will have passed and the winter will be upon us and we will start planning for next year I shall concentrate harder on what my future plans will look like. I will be able to tell you more then.

R.J.: We thank you, and until then we wish you good luck.