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The Rediff Business Special/ Ranvir Nayar

European agreement may help Railways end signalling disasters

The Gaisal railway disaster has once again exposed the risk-laden ancient signalling and traction technology of the Indian Railways and the need to upgrade them urgently.

The accident has also highlighted the need for the Indian Railways to rapidly increase the pace of implementation of the agreement that it has signed with the Paris-based International Railways Union for modernising signalling technology.

This ultra-modern technology will not only make the safety and reliability of the Indian Railways amongst the best in the world, but also enable the railways to consecrate to history the 400 accidents that it suffers each year.

During his visit to Paris in February, Railway Minister Nitish Kumar had signed an agreement with the Union Internationale des Chemins des feu for implementing a pilot project for testing the new technology, which will bring the safety and reliability of the Indian systems at par with the most advanced systems in the world.

The technology is currently undergoing final trials in several European countries including Italy and Switzerland. India is the only other country which has been invited to participate in these trials. The system, if implemented, will bring a sea change in the technology employed by the Indian Railways.

The project is being executed by the Paris-based UIC, a non govermental organisation of railway systems from all over the world. The Indian part of the project will be conducted on a tracklength of about 200 km on the Delhi-Mathura corridor.

A detailed project report of the test has already been prepared by the Indian Railways and appraised by engineers from the UIC and the Railways.

Says Vipin Sharma, World Director, UIC: "Right now, we are preparing a computer simulation of where the equipment will be placed all along the track length, since the new system has to work alongside the existing system. This will be finalised soon and a couple of experts from India are expected to visit Paris shortly for witnessing the simulation as well as to visit the ongoing track trials in Switzerland, where the system is in pre-commissioning mode."

The project, costing nearly Rs 500 million, will be ready for execution on ground by the end of 2000, since it involves a totally new system, and a leap of several generations over the existing systems in India.

Almost 300 locomotives will be fitted with the most modern sensors for the trial, which will last a year. The pre-trial stage is also long, since an extensive system of vendors for the new technology has to be developed. And to prevent monopoly by a single vendor, the railways have decided to ask all vendors to make their systems intercompatible and interchangeable. "This is a very complex procedure and will take time," says Sharma.

He told rediff.com in Paris that India's inclusion in the project was a very significant step for the Indian Railways. "The technology that we are talking about is not an old technology, not even something that is currently in use anywhere in the world or is about to be introduced. This is the technology of the next century and India will get its hands on the technlology just at the same time as the European countries will get it. This will bring the Indian Railways technology to the forefront. And it was a very significant decision for the Indian Railways to implement."

Sharma says this is a three-phase programme which will ultimately result in trains being fully independent intelligent units in which one unit can communicate with others on the same track to ensure that a safe distance is always maintained.

The sensors in each unit will ensure that if there is a train ahead on the same track, the sensors on all the following trains will activate brakes and if necessary bring the train to a total halt. "This system will not only make the Indian Railways extremely safe, it will also increase the capacity of the existing track by over 70 per cent, thus resulting in a massive saving on the investment that the railways would have to make to meet the future demand," the Indian Railways officials say.

This will prove especially useful as nearly ten per cent of the Indian tracks are due for renewal and better capacity utilisation will ease the pressure on the railways.

In order to make the technology commercially viable for poorer countries like India, it will be offered in three stages. In stage one, the sensors will enable the train unit to communicate with the track and through it to a central control room. In the next stage, the unit will communicate with the central control room through a wireless system. And in the last stage, the units will communicate with each other and take proper decisions on distance and speeds.

To ensure that there is no systems failure at this stage, Sharma says there will be multiple backups for these. "As this is an expensive system and calls for literally throwing away the existing system, it might be difficult for all the countries to use it. To make it more cost competitive, we will introduce in it phases where even in the second phase, the railways will be able to use at least some of the currrent infrastructure and thus afford to introduce this revolutionary technology," Sharma said.

The Indian Railways say though several companies had offered to conduct the entire Indian test at their expense, it had rejected the offers and is paying for the tests. "If someone conducts the test for us, he will expect all the orders. But we follow the global tendering policy and hence will award the final contract to the lowest bidder and hence don't want to be obligated to anybody right now," say senior railway officials.

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