PTI

Hyderabad, March 4

Terming the indigenously developed Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system—‘Kavach’ as an outstanding enchancment in security and a terrific contribution to accident prevention, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Friday mentioned the expertise will probably be applied over whole rail community within the nation and also will be exported to the world within the subsequent coming years, whilst he had a primary hand expertise of the collision aversion mechanism by being a part of a stay demo right here.

Vaishnaw, who travelled in a locomotive and inspected the working of ‘Kavach’ together with on-site demonstration of head-on collision, mentioned it’s a main milestone within the historical past of Indian Railways.

The spotlight of right this moment’s demonstration was the avoidance of the head-on collision by ‘Kavach’ with out handbook intervention.

This was demonstrated between Gullaguda – Chitgidda railway stations on Lingampalli – Vikarabad part of Secunderabad Division in South Central Railway (SCR), with Vaishnaw travelling in a locomotive in a single route, whereas Vinay Kumar Tripathi, Chairman and CEO, Railway Board was travelling in one other on the other way on the identical monitor and ‘Kavach’ labored as desired to cease the trains and avert a collision.

The Minister witnessed how the expertise avoids trains passing Signal at Danger, how their velocity is mechanically regulated whereas passing by means of loop strains and the way rear-end collision is mechanically prevented.

Kavach, which accurately means armour, is being promoted by the Railways because the world’s least expensive computerized practice collision safety system.

Announced within the 2022 Union Budget as part of the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative, 2,000 km of rail community is deliberate to be introduced below ‘Kavach’ for security and capability augmentation in 2022-23.

“In the budget 2,000 km has been approved and in subsequent years ‘Kavach’ will be deployed in 4,000-5,000 km every year,” Vaishnaw instructed reporters.

“Kavach is a very important Automatic Train Protection technology. This is a great technology development and a major step taken by Indian Railways in taking forward Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s initiative of Atmanirbhar Bharat,” he mentioned.

It will increase passenger security. It is designed, developed and manufactured in India and will probably be deployed in India and exported to the world, within the coming years.

“If we bring such a technology from Europe it will cost between Rs 1.5 crore to Rs 2 crore per kilometre to operate while ‘Kavach’, which is indigenously developed Automatic Train Protection system will cost between Rs 40 lakh to Rs 50 lakh per km and is a step ahead when compared to technology offered by other similar system,” he mentioned.

The goal is to put in Kavach in 2,000 kms and will probably be deployed on Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah corridors initially. And in subsequent years ‘Kavach’ will probably be deployed in 4,000 km to five,000 km yearly, he added.

Vaishnaw additional mentioned 4G spectrum has been allotted to the Railways which can help in additional bettering the reliability of practice operations.

He mentioned ‘Kavach’ expertise has been examined at SIL-4 (Safety Integrity Level- 4) which is the very best stage of security and integrity. “It means during 11,600 years of operation there is a probability of only one error and that is the level of safety and integrity of this system. It has already been tested on high speed at 180 km per hour and subsequent testing beyond 200 kms is also going on,” he mentioned.

To a question on when the Railways will obtain aim of “zero accidents”, the Minister mentioned there are such a lot of components on which we now have to constantly work on.

“We have to make sure that our passengers are safe. We have to make sure that every technology which is needed has to be developed and deployed on the railway network. That is the target with which we have to work. This (Kavach) is a great contribution to accident prevention. There are many more things that we have to do in terms of improving the track quality, in terms of improving the coaches and the trains that we travel in”, he mentioned.

Kavach is designed to deliver a practice to a halt mechanically when it notices one other practice on the identical line inside a prescribed distance. Trains will even cease on their very own when digital system notices any handbook error like “jumping” of the pink sign or some other malfunction.

The ‘On-Board Display of Signal Aspect’ (OBDSA) is to assist loco pilots examine indicators on board consoles. RFID tags are offered on the tracks and at station yard for every monitor and indicators for monitor identification, location of trains and identification of practice route.

Once the system is activated, all trains inside a 5-km vary will halt to supply safety for trains on adjoining tracks. Currently, loco-pilots or assistant loco-pilots normally crane their necks out of the window to look out for warning indicators and indicators, mentioned officers.

It additionally consists of stationary tools to collect signaling and loco inputs and relay them to a central system for seamless communication with the practice crew and stations.

Kavach is developed by Research Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO) in collaboration with Indian trade.

During the event section, Kavach was applied for a size of 264 km protecting 25 stations throughout Wadi – Vikarabad – Sanath Nagar and Vikarabad – Bidar sections over South Central Railway. Later, the system has been additional prolonged by further 936 kms, taking the cumulative deployment of Kavach to 1,200 kms, an SCR launch mentioned.

SCR General Manager Sanjeev Kishore, different senior officers from Railway Board and South Central Railway have been current on the event.