Indian Railways has indigenously developed an automatic train protection system ‘Kavach’ (Train Collision Avoidance System TCAS), to prevent accidents due to human error resulting in Signal Passing in danger and over-speeding.
Safety is accorded the highest priority by Indian Railways and all possible steps, including the development of indigenous equipment, are being undertaken continuously to prevent train accidents.
Keeping in view the complexities involved in implementation, which require all Rolling Stock, way side stations and track to be equipped with ‘Kavach’, it has been decided to implement ‘Kavach’ in a phased manner.
So far, ‘Kavach’ has been deployed for 1,455 Route Kms on South Central Railway with 77 nos. of locomotives. Currently, ‘Kavach’ work is in progress on Delhi – Mumbai & Delhi – Howrah corridors (3000 route Kms).
‘Kavach’ include controlling speed of trains by Automatic application of brakes on approach of turnouts, Repeating of signal aspects in cab, which is useful for higher speeds & foggy weathers, and Auto whistling at level crossing gates.
At present ‘Kavach’ is being implemented on Indian Railways in a phased manner. Further, ‘Kavach’ does have export potential in future.
This information was given by the Minister of Railways, Communications and Electronic & Information Technology, Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha yesterday.