Safety First Policy

A ‘Safety First’ policy, with allocation of adequate funds under Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh is cornerstone of Railways’ focus on safety. Maintenance of track infrastructure is being given special attention. Over 3600 kms of track renewal is targeted during the current fiscal. Other major steps include increasing use of technology like ‘‘Fog Safe’’ and ‘‘Train Protection and Warning System’’. A decision has been taken to eliminate 4267 unmanned level crossings in the broad gauge network in the next two years.

High Level Safety Review Committee (HLSRC)

A High-Level Safety Review Committee under the Chairmanship of Dr. Anil Kakodkar, former Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission was constituted on 16.09.2011 to go into all technical and technology related aspects in connection with safe running of train services in the country. The Committee submitted its Report on 17.02.2012.All the 106 recommendations of the Committee have since been deliberated upon and 87 recommendations have been found fully/partially acceptable and 19 have not been found acceptable to the Ministry of Railways. Of the accepted recommendations, 65 have been fully/partially implemented. The remaining recommendations are at various stages of implementation.

Safety Initiatives

  • Gate Mitras: Target of Eliminating All Unmanned Level Crossing preponed to 2018. Till the time this is achieved, in the interim period, Indian Railways decided to deploy Gate Mitras. Gate Mitra is an initiative where a person will be deployed at a UMLC, and would alert road users about approaching trains. All UMLCs on Broad Gauge as on November 2017 were provided with Gate Mitras.
  • Track Renewal speeded up: 2148 km old rails have been replaced with new rails upto Nov’17. Progress during corresponding period last year was 1624 km between April to Nov’16.
  • Self-Propelled Ultrasonic Rail Testing (SPURTZ Car) is under procurement and trial of Ultrasonic Broken Rail Detection System is underway. Train Protection and Warning System (TPWS) is under implementation on Suburban/High- density Routes.
  • Introduced and proliferated Global Positioning System (GPS) based ‘Fog Pass device’ which displays the name and distance of approaching signals and other critical signal landmarks in advance during train operation. At present total 7263 Fog Pass Devices have been procured and being used in NR, NER, NCR, ECR, NFR& NWR which are the most fog affected Railways.

Locomotive Factory

French company Alstom has completed its first all-electric locomotive at its state-of-the-art facility at Madhepura in Bihar on schedule.These new locomotives will not only bring down the operating cost for the railways, but significantly cut down greenhouse gas emissions as well.The first locomotive is part of a 3.5-billion euros order for 800 electric double-section locomotives, signed in 2015, part of the Ministry of Railways’ public-private partnership programme to modernise the country’s rail infrastructure.

Madhepura factory will manufacture High Horse Power Freight locomotives (9000 hp) for hauling longer and heavier trains with improved mobility. It will also manufacture High Horse Power Passenger locomotives (9000 hp) for improving average speed of coaching trains.

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