Title - Railways to better passenger safety

Union Railways Minister Mukul Roy,who assumed charge of the key portfolio some three months ago, has initiated talks with European firms for procuring the Train Protection and Warning System (TPWS) in rail engines as part of the Railways’ efforts to ensure better safety to passengers. If the proposal comes through, TPWS will be installed  on 20,000 railway engines that haul 30 million passengers and 2.8 million tonnes of freight each day.

“Anti-Collision Device machine has failed to prevent train accidents. Therefore the ministry is contemplating on  installing TPWS in train engines,” he said in Varanasi.

In fact, Roy had in this year’s Rail Budget rejected a report on safety commissioned by his predecessor Dinesh Trivedi. But his subsequent change of heart was apparently prompted by the two recent rail mishaps- involving the Hampi Express as well as the Doon Express. Incidentally, installation of the TPWS has been in the pipeline in the Railway Ministry since 2006. However, trials did not throw up the best results when the system was tried on short distances.  Despite the poor results, the ministry has decided to greenlight the installation of the TPWS across 3000 kilometres of tracks.

The recently released CAG report on Railways had also pointed out this discrepany.

“Though the trials were conducted through a period of more than two years, the reliability of the TPWS fell short of prescribed standard of 99.9 per cent. The trial reports of indigenously developed TPWS commissioned in May 2009 in Chennai-Gummidipundi of Southern The Railways revealed that the system suffered from various software and hardware problems. The work on the pilot project commenced 6 years ago was yet incomplete as the Rlys had resorted to frequent changes in the design of equipment to make it suitable to Indian conditions.”