According to officials, the Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has checked the progress of Kavach 4.0, an advanced version of the Automatic Train Protection System (ATP), at Rail Bhawan in New Delhi on June 24.
While Kavach 3.2 version is being installed on approved high-density routes, it will also be upgraded and installed on new routes at the same time to cover a wider railway network within a shorter period, said railway officials.
The officials said Mr. Vaishnaw reviewed the progress of Kavach 4.0 on June 22.
“The Minister was presented with its progress report by three manufacturers of Kavach who are already in advanced stage of testing version 4.0,” explained a senior railway official.
He noted that after reviewing it, the Minister directed that installation of Kavach should be carried out as soon as it is ready in mission mode and planned manner.
Railway Ministry has asserted that with development of Kavach it reached another significant milestone in safety for railways.
Earlier Mr. Vaishnaw stated during interactions with media on several occasions that whereas most railway systems worldwide had adopted ATP by the nineteen eighties, Indian Railways embarked upon this journey with sanctioning of first Train Collision Avoidance System version in year 2016.
It passed rigorous trials and tests in 2019 before receiving SIL4 certification which is regarded as world’s highest level safety certification for safety system.
According to Railways, it became national ATP system in year 2020 and despite COVID-19 pandemic outbreak; testing and development have gone ahead .
Firstly, eigh – mounth means November through March while secondly – March through August: these two periods are known as “dry” (inappropriate for rain), and “wet”. In 2021, version 3.2 of the system was certified and adopted and in the last quarter of 2022, work was started to install this version on high-density network routes of Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah.
The pundits who are installing ATP are saying that a five subsystems are needed for its operations.
These systems consist of: an optical fibre network, towers, radio equipment as well as RFID tags installed along the railway tracks; while data centres were set up at the railway stations integrated with signalling system.
Additionally, every train and locomotive has another subsystem of Kavach installed.
The officials said that after the development of Kavach version 4.0 and its certification, railways will scale up its installation in mission mode.
“Several more developers are working on it which are at different stages of development. Being a safety system, Kavach approvals require meticulous testing at international standards before getting certified,” a senior railway official said.
“The Indian Railways operates an extensive network characterized by various situations to be included in such safety systems since any train can traverse any part of the rail network,” he added.
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