South Central Railway (SCR), where the Indian Railways had pilot tested the state-of-the-art indigenously developed Automatic Train Protection system ‘Kavach’, has now deployed it in a total of 859 km of its network in the last financial year of 2021-22
General Manager in-charge Arun Kumar Jain informed on Thursday that this has been the best-ever performance by the zone in a financial year, since the commencement of the project. ‘Kavach’ has been developed by the Research Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO) in collaboration with domestic Industry with SCR associated with it from the development stage and trials to improve safety in train operations.
The ATP activates the train breaking system automatically if the loco pilot fails to control the train as per the speed restrictions and it also prevents collision between two trains /locomotives. It was initially tested in 264 km covering 25 stations across Wadi – Vikarabad – Sanatnagar and Vikarabad – Bidar sections and this was later taken to an additional 322 km covering 32 stations and now it covers 77 stations.
Cumulative deployment has reached to 1,445 rail km (including 68 rail km of automatic signalling) covering 133 stations, 29 level crossing gates and 74 locomotives with sections covered including Manmad - Mudkhed - Nizamabad - Sitafalmandi - Kurnool – Guntakal (excluding Secunderabad and Guntakal Stations); Parbhani - Bidar - Vikarabad - Wadi and Wadi - Sanatnagar.
Kavach also enables auto-whistling at level crossings, sends ‘SoS’ messages during emergencies and helps in centralized live monitoring of train movements through the Network Monitor System, said an official spokesperson and added that more sections will be covered this year.
IRISET probatationers
Vipul Yadav from among the 32 probationers of Indian Railways Service of Signal Engineers (IRSSE) of the 2019 batch topped in the training programme by the Indian Railways Institute of Signal Engineering and Telecommunications (IRISET) at the passing out function held on Thursday.
The successfulprobationers will be posted as Assistant Divisional Signal and Telecommunication Engineer (ADSTE) in various zonal railways. IRISET Director General Sudhir Kumar, addl DG P. Venkata Ramana and others presided over the function and stressed that the probationers should act as the bridge between the new technologies being adopted like ‘Kavach’ and others.
