Railway minister inspects train protection system

HYDERABAD: Railway minister Ashwini Vaishnav on Friday inspected the working of ‘Kavach’ – Indian Railways’ indigenous train protection system — between Gullaguda and Chitgidda railway stations in Vikarabad district on Friday.

While Vaishnav travelled in one train, Railway Board V.K. Tripathi travelled in the opposite direction on the same track to demonstrate the system which prevents head-on collisions.

Kavach helps prevent signal passing at danger, controls speed while passing through loop lines, averts rear-end collision of trains and rectifies human errors. The pilot project of this system was demonstrated in 2013 and 2014, between Lingampally and Vikarabad stations.

This system is a major milestone in the history of Indian Railways which is planning to implement this system on 2,000 km during the current financial year on high-density routes like New Delhi-Mumbai and New Delhi-Howrah. An additional 4,000 km to 5,000 km will be covered in the next financial year. The cost of this system is between Rs 40 lakh and Rs 50 lakh for each kilometre when compared to the European models costing Rs 1.5 crore to Rs 2 crore for each kilometre.

Speaking to this newspaper, Vaishnav said, “Kavach is a major step by Indian Railways in taking forward the initiative of Atmanirbhar Bharat. Indian Railways is planning to implement the Kavach protection system over its entire network at the earliest. 4G spectrum has been allocated to Indian Railways which will assist in further improving the reliability of train operations.”

“This total project is developed by Indians and most of the components used are made in India. This will give encouragement to the young generation, especially those who are talented, but rendering their services and skills to foreign countries,” he said.