The Hindu : Railways launch anti-collision device survey

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Wednesday, Apr 23, 2003

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Railways launch anti-collision device survey

By Our Staff Reporter

TIRUPATI APRIL 22. A survey for providing the Anti-Collision Device (ACD) system, also known as "Raksha Kavach'', was inaugurated on Tuesday by the Minister of State for Railways, Bandaru Dattatreya, at the Renigunta railway station near here. The survey for the ACD system, the first of its kind in the country, will be conducted in the 400-km Renigunta-Toranagallu section of the Guntakal division of the South Central Railway.

Describing the facility as a fitting gift from the Railways to the commuters in the year dedicated to customer satisfaction, Mr. Dattatreya expressed the hope that the system could open new vistas in passenger safety.

He congratulated the managing director of the Konkan Railway Corporation Limited (KRCL), B. Rajaram, for being behind the development of the indigenous technology that put the country much ahead of the developed West. In fact, the Railway Board had handpicked the technology after ruling out the ones developed abroad, as it was found to be even more advanced on the technical front. "It is an example of the Indian brain proving its mettle when its hands are strengthened,'' he noted.

On the spate of rail accidents in the near past that resulted in a lot of destruction and loss of human lives, Mr. Dattatreya hoped that it would be a thing of the past as the technology, tested in the Jalandhar-Amritsar section for a year, gave an overwhelmingly positive result by minimising the chances of collision by 95 p.c. The system would be implemented in the 10,000-km route in the country at a cost of Rs.183 crores.

Earlier, introducing the technology to the Minister, Mr. Rajaram said that "Raksha Kavach'' was a network of "self-acting'' microprocessor-based communication devices that would automatically apply brakes to trains if they perceived signals of "infringement'' of the track. Communicating through radio waves, the devices "speak" to each other through the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite.

S.M. Singla, General Manager of the South Central Railway, told the Minister that the work would be over by June, paving the way for taking up further survey up to Vasco-da-Gama via Hubli, thus covering a distance of 790 km at a cost of Rs.1.34 crores.

Earlier, the Minister switched on a button to activate the ACD system, following which two locos set out on the same track (leaving enough margin) up to Toranagallu to check the performance of the equipment as well as the satellite signal strength en route.

The patented technology of `Raksha Kavach' is all about a network of "self-acting'' microprocessor-based communication devices that automatically apply brakes to trains, thus protecting the travelling public as well as road-users at level-crossing gates from collision-related accidents. An ACD system, similar to an electric meter box, costs Rs.5.5 lakhs, that will be fitted on 7,000 locos, stations and guard vans and at 10,000 level-crossings at a total cost of Rs.1,600 crores.

At a media conference here on Monday, Mr. Rajaram said the technology of making machines "take decisions without manual input'' showcased the country's knowledge, software expertise and the system design strength, aided by international standard hardware. He also pointed out that the KRC succeeded in developing the technology, working on the GPS, when Europe failed to design a suitable software taking into account the required parameters to identify a signal.

Communicating through radio waves, the system provides "Door Drishti'', a three-km range detection system that allows the locomotive to act `independently' to apply brakes, in case it perceives a danger of collision. The three-km mark here is the minimum distance required for two trains to come to a halt even at a high speed to avoid hitting the other head-on. An ACD fitted to a station will indicate to the train entering it whether there are any trains on the main line.

Similar is the case with level-crossing ACDs and loco ACDs (in case of `infringement' of a track due to a derailment on its neighbour).

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