Indian Railways accord highest priority to safety in train operations. Safety measures taken on Indian Railways is a continuous process which envisage accident prevention and mitigation directed towards continuous reduction in risk level to its customers. This is done by adopting new technologies and improvement in asset reliability to reduce human dependency. In the Budget 2017-18, setting up of a Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh (RRSK) has been announced with a corpus of Rs1 lakh crore over a period of 5 years. A provision of Rs 20,000 crore has been made in Budget 2017-18 towards RRSK to fund essential safety works.
Railways have introduced new technologies such as Train Protection Warning System (TPWS)/ Train Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) as means of Automatic Train Protection on pilot section to prevent accident due to over speeding & passing signal at danger. Further the TPWS System is under implementation at 3330 RKMs section on Suburban/High-density Route. During 2017-18, work of TCAS System at 1427 RKM has also been sanctioned. Other Safety measures taken to prevent accidents include Vigilance Control Device (VCD) to check alertness of Loco Pilot, Electrical/Electronic Interlocking System with Centralized operations of points to eliminate human failure, Complete Track Circuiting, Axle Counter for Automatic Clearance of Block Section (BPAC), interlocking of manned Level Crossing gates and replacement of filament type signal with Light Emitting Diode (LED) Signals. Safety measures taken to improve safety of Railway Track include usage of prestressed concrete sleepers, 60 Kg, 90 or higher Ultimate Tensile Strength (UTS) Rails, Long Rail Panels of 260m/130m length, provision of Thick Web Switches (TWS) for all important routes and Track Management System. It has also been decided to gradually phase out ICF Coaches and replace them by new design light weight modern technology Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB) Coaches, introduce high capacity Centre Buffer Couplers (CBC) and Bogie Mounted Brake System (BMBS). Indian Railways is gradually moving towards automatic condition monitoring of Rolling Assets. As a part of this initiative, Railways are installing Wheel Impact Load Detectors (WILD), Online Monitoring of Rolling Stock System (OMRS) and Centralized Bearing Monitoring System (CBMS) in a phased manner.
This Press Release is based on the information given by the Minister of State for Railways Shri Rajen Gohain in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha on 29.03.2017 (Wednesday).
