Indian Railways’ East Central Railway(ECR) zone will install an advanced signalling system dubbed as ‘Kavach’ for the smooth running of many trains that pass through the zone. ECR’s chief public relations officer(CPRO), Virendra Kumar said that the system will be installed on the Pt Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Junction - Gaya-Dhanbad Grand Chord route and a tender for the same has been floated over an estimated cost of ₹151 crore.
“The 408-km-long Pt Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Junction - Gaya-Dhanbad Grand Chord route is an important and busiest railway route in our country covering 77 station and 79 level crossing gates. The division permits speed upto 130 km per hour," Kumar said to Hindustan Times. As a part of Atmanirbhar Bharat, 2,000 km of network will be brought under Kavach, the indigenous world-class technology for safety and capacity augmentation in 2022-23.
How does the Kavach system will work
Train Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) is an indigenously developed Automatic Train Protection (ATP) System meant to provide protection to trains against Signal Passing at Danger (SPAD), excessive speed and collisions.
TCAS provides continuous update of Movement Authority (distance upto which the train is permitted to travel without danger). Hence during unsafe situations when brake application is necessitated, and the Crew has either failed to do so, or is not in position to do so, automatic brake application shall take place. TCAS has additional features to display information like speed, location, distance to signal ahead, Signal aspects etc. in Loc Pilot's cab and generation of Auto and Manual SOS messages (Distress messages) from Loco as well as Station unit in case of emergency situation. The communication between Stationary TCAS and Loco TCAS units shall be Safety Integrity Level 4 (SIL-4) certified, while Loco TCAS to Loco TCAS communication, Non-Signalling based additional collision protection features (i.e. Head-on. Rear end & Side Collision) and Manual SOS are non-SIL (not failsafe).
