Dagmagpur

North Central Railway

Headquarter

Public Relations

Prayagraj

No. 11PR/01/2020Press ReleaseDate: 10.01.2020

NORTH CENTRAL RAILWAY – MOBILITY IS OUR HALLMARK

AUTOMATION FOR SAFE TRAIN OPERATIONS

North Central Railway is o­nly Zonal Railway which caters to 10% of total Indian Railways traffic through just 5% of total assets o­n Indian Railways. It is also the o­nly Railway which maintains and operates o­n 58 % of New Delhi-Howrah, 24 % of New Delhi Chennai and 6% of New Delhi- Mumbai, three most important and busiest railway routes. Mobility o­n North Central Railways plays the key role in transportation of passengers and freight from North to East,West and South.It is therefore utmost important that hindrances in train operation due to enroute defects in coaching and freight trains are identified timely and attended promptly to avoid any major traffic interruption.

Despite technological advancement in field of rolling stock maintenance, defects like hot axle, brake binding, hanging parts etc. do occur in few trains which not o­nly cause blockage of the section but also poses safety threat if goes undetected for considerable time period.Conventionally Indian railway have been identifying these defects through experienced and alert Railwamen deployed at rolling in examination points, stations ,end cabins, level crossing gates etc. However, with elimination of manned level gates by road over bridges / road under bridges number of gatemen have reduced substantially and accordingly available eyes for monitoring of moving trains have gone down. During 2019-20 ,75 manned level crossing gates are already replaced by ROB/ RUBs till December,2019 and more than 100 level crossing gates are planned for replacement with ROB/RUBs in 2020 over North Central Railway. Similarly, with increase in number of lines at stations, increase in speed, elimination of end cabins etc. it has become difficult for station staff also to observe all trains.

This situation had to be overcome by technology leveraging where mandatory enroute train examination is automated which is safer, reliable and requires least human intervention. North Central Railway has done pathbreaking and pioneering work in field of automated rolling stock monitoring system by installing first ever fully automatic hot axle and hot wheel(HAHW) detection system at Chunar station of Allahabad division. This system has detected 38 hot axle and 297 brake binding since commissioning in March 2017 to ensure detention free train running in Chunar – Allahabad up main line.Identifying need of more such automation in the field of rolling stock monitoring and boosted up with performance of maiden system installed at Chunar,North Central Railway under the visionary leadership of its General Manager Sri Rajiv Chaudhry worked o­n creating a comprehensive safety grid of automated wayside rolling stock monitoring systems. This system had to be planned in such a way so that trains entering in NCR territory are checked immediately and also at regular interval for their entire run o­n its territory utilizing such automated system. Further system being installed was also required to cover all major defects of rolling stock like Hot Axle, Brake Binding, Hanging Parts etc.

To serve above objectives North Central Railway created a safety grid by judiciously choosing an array of equipments to identify major rolling stock defects and planned them at suitable location for comprehensive safety coverage of its entire stretch o­n Agra, Allahabad and Jhansi divisions. This earnest effort of North Central Railway in right direction has already started showing positive signs as it o­nce again succeeded in installing Indian Railway’s first Hanging Part Detection(HPDS) system, an automated wayside system to identify hanging part in a train and raise alert. First such system of Indian Railway is integrated with existing hot axle and hot wheel detector at Chunar. Commissioned in April -2018, this system capable of identifying defects even at the speed of 130km has already proved its worth by successfully detecting hanging parts in trains to avoid any possible unsafe condition.

North central has also gone for an advanced version of Hot axle and Hot wheel detector termed as ATES (Automatic train examination system). This system has all capabilities of HAHW with additional features of detecting temperature of LHB brake disc and high speed video recording of all undercarriage items in a moving train.

Flat wheel is another abnormal condition in which wheel loses its roundness due to skidding and a localized flat is developed o­n its tread. This flat place exerts high impact load specially at higher speeds and have potential to damage railway track as well as bearings etc. of coaches and wagons.To identify this defect without human intervention NCR has planned WILD at suitable intervals. Wheel impact load detector (WILD) senses impact load coming o­n instrumented portion of track and exactly identifies defective wheel so that further damage to track or rolling stock is avoided.

Moving a notch further North Central Railway has also gone for OMRS (On line monitoring of rolling stock), a combination of hot axle detector and wheel impact load detector based o­n very advanced technology as it identifies defective bearing from healthy o­nes using difference in acoustic pattern generated from bearings of rolling stock o­n run. Being acoustic based it identifies bearing defect in very early stage thus enhanced safety and adequate time margin to plan and detach such rolling stock for bearing attention. Under the overall guidance from its General Manager Sri Rajiv Chaudhry North Central Railway has devised following safety grid in a paradigm shift towards automation in enroute rolling stock defect identification:

Once fully implemented, detention to trains o­n account of defects in wagon and coaches shall be a thing of past and this safety grid along with many other initiatives of North Central Railway will pave the way for 100% punctual running of trains o­n this busiest railway of Indian Railway which doesn’t seems a distant dream now.