The railway minister Dinesh Trivedi said that Rs 2,002 crore has been allocated for Indian Railways’ signalling and telecom works to enhance the safety and security of passengers and avert collision of trains.

He said that the total cost of various signalling and telecom works has been estimated to be Rs. 39,110 crore in the next 5 years.

Signalling Systems to be modernized with Advanced Technological Features

Signalling system on Indian Railways with the provisioning of advanced technological features. These would include Panel/Route Relay Interlocking covering 700 more stations by 2014 thereby completing 5500 out of the required 6200 stations; Interlocking of more than 1500 level crossing gates in addition to the 10000 already interlocked, leaving a balance of 250; complete track circuiting at 1250 out of 6200 identified stations, installation of axle counters at 3000 more stations and provision of isolation at the remaining 625 stations.

One of the significant advancement would be the provisioning of Train Protection & Warning System (TPWS), which ensures automatic application of brakes whenever a driver over-shoots a signal at danger, thereby eliminating chances of collision of trains. To begin with, TPWS is proposed to be installed on more than 3,000 route kms, which would cover the entire automatic signalling territory on Indian Railways.

He said, the Railways is taking necessary action to ensure that TPWS technology is suitably adapted to Indian conditions. Besides the efforts to develop TCAS (Train Collision Avoidance System) integrating features of different technologies will be continued by RDSO. These would also be a pre-requisite to increase speed of passenger trains to 160 kmph. The total cost of various signalling and telecom works has been estimated to be Rs. 39,110 crore in the next 5 years. Towards this end, the Ministry proposes to provide Rs. 2,002 crore in 2012-13, which is more than double the allocation of the current year and the highest ever.