Railways to introduce advance warning system in the next rail budget

AGRA: After more than two decades of wait and years of trial on indigenous developed collision warning system, Indian railway is all set to introduce world's most advanced Train Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) on the world's third largest rail network covering 66,000km route.

The system is expected to be formally introduced post March month between New Delhi to Mughalsarai and New Delhi to Jhansi.

Speaking to TOI, a director general level official of railway said, "The success of Indian engineered technology will be reflected in coming rail budget and it will be laid down on tracks boosting the PM Modi 'Make in India' initiative."

He said, "Recently we received a successful report of pilot project undertook by South Central Zone in Secunderabad division on 250 km long track, which has paved the way for series of introduction of system across country, now it was upto railway board as how much fund they want to allocate to implement it on tracks."

"TCAS developed by RDSO (Research Designs and Standards Organisation) is combination of earlier truncated version of Train Protection Warning System (TPWS) and latest European Train Control System level II (ETCS-II). The technology could pave the way for driver-less train operation in future and is most advanced among all the available system across world," he said.

"TCAS can tab signals up to a distance of three km and intimate the loco pilot about the status of enroute signals, station and other trains in the area on the dash board monitor, which means that loco pilot would no longer need to look outside in foggy weather conditions or in night," he claimed.

TCAS is based on a combination of railway signaling data with radio communications, global position, radio frequency identification devices, software and logic.

He further added, "The system is cheapest in world merely Rs 10 lakh per km to implement, and is expected to be introduced on trunk route for Indian railways in program manner."