New Delhi, 

 The first Maintenance Study Group (MSG) meeting of Indian Railways was held at the Headquarters of Northeast Frontier Railway at Maligaon, Guwahati last weekend and served as a comprehensive platform for the exchange of ideas in best practices, innovative and emerging technologies in telecom maintenance across the Indian Railways network.

Modern technologies are being introduced in the Indian railways – one of the largest integrated railway networks in the world – almost every day. So, workers also need to upgrade themselves and become technology friendly.

The MSG meeting could provide better opportunities to learn about upgraded technologies. If we talk about the safety of the trains, the Kavach system is being installed in the railways which will be handled by S&T department in that situation. Staff need to learn about this technology for smooth operation,” Beniwal added

Indian Railway’s Signaling & Telecommunication staffs of the North East Frontier attended the meeting but they demanded an extension of Telecom Maintenance Study Group (MSG) meetings to all zones for the benefit of railway system.

The S & T staff who attended the meeting acknowledged that the workshop was immensely beneficial and necessary to improve modern skills among railway staff members.

Echoing the similar views, Jagdish Beniwal, Assistant Secretary of IRSTMU, told ETV Bharat “Such workshops and interactions are necessary to help ground level operational railway staff members to acquire modern technological skills. This will reflect in the smooth operation of the railways.”

According to Railway official sources Kavach is an Indian Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system indigeneously developed. Initially Kavach was known as Train Collision Avoidance Sysrem (TCAS) and adopted by the Indian Railways as the National ATP system in July 2020.

Development of Kavach technology began in 2011 and field trials were carried out in 2014. First field trial experiments on passenger trains was done in February 2016. It is being promoted as one of the cheapest ATP systems available worldwide

Kavach incorporates several key features of European Train Control System as well as Anti-Collision Device.

However, railway engineers think that ETCS is wider in its scope, and also Kavach is not intended to function as a replacement for traditional lineside signalling system of the railways.

During financial year 2022-23 Railways allocated funds for rapid implementation of Kavach across 2,000 km of track.

Alok Chandra Prakash, general secretary of Indian Railways S&T Maintainers’ Union (IRSTMU), told ETV Bharat, “The railways should conduct meetings, seminars and workshops for S&T staff to make them technology friendly which will definitely improve railway’s function and ensure safe train operations.”

Emphasis was also placed on tracking performance metrics such as Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) and Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), which are vital for assessing operational efficiency, Kapinjal Kishore Sharma, Chief Public Relations Officer, Northeast Frontier Railways informed.

maintenance strategies for major telecom assets like Optical Fibre Networks, telecom towers, Video Surveillance Systems (VSS), IP-MPLS networks and Integrated Passenger Information Systems (IPIS), all of which play a critical role in modernizing communication infrastructure information was disseminated and discussed, Sharma said.

Train Accidents in India:

During 2023-24 financial year there were 40 train accidents in India claiming as many as 313 passengers and four railway employees.

In 2022-23 there were 48 train accidents. While derailments remain the most common cause, the share of collision increased.

Despite safety measures Indian Railways is said to have experienced fluctuating collision rates highlighting better prevention technology.

Expressing his view on MSG meeting, Prabodh Kumar Srivastava, national treasurer of Indian Railways S&T Maintainers’ Union (IRSTMU), held similar views to ETV Bharat.

During the weekend meet at Maligaon several key areas, including automated trouble ticketing systems for telecom equipment, asset monitoring through interactive dashboards, maintenance of Mobile Train Radio Communication (MTRC) OSS and data centre operations at both divisional and zonal levels came up for discussion.

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