Indian Railways Now Super-Connected: ISRO Connects Locomotives With Indian Satellites!

Who likes waiting for a train at the railway station for endless hours? And if the train is delayed? That’s like kicking someone when they’re down! But not anymore! We have good news for you rail-travelers – you can now track the arrival and departure of your train.

News has been confirmed that Indian Railways has linked its locomotives via ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) satellites. This will automatically feed the control charts and will inform customers about the arrival and departure of the train.

Indian Railways has previously introduced a mental wellness training program for TTEs and Officers, onboard shopping for customers, dynamic pricing of tickets, Smart coach, pizza vending machines among other facilities.

How Will This System Work?

A senior railway official explained that the speed and position of the train will be detected by a Real-time Train Information System (RTIS). It will use the GAGAN geo-positioning system which is developed by ISRO. The train movement updates (arrival/departure/run through/unscheduled stoppages and mid-section updates) will be sent to the Central Location Server (CLS) in the CRIS data center through S-band Mobile Satellite Service (MSS) of ISRO.

After processing the information in the CLS, this information will be sent to the Control Office Application (COA) system, where there will be an automatic plotting of control charts without no manual intervention.

According to the official, “The train movement information is acquired and fed to the control charts using ISRO satellite-based real-time train information system (RTIS) automatically. Before this technique was developed by the CRIS (Centre for Railway Information System) in collaboration with ISRO, the divisional controls set up for the purpose of train movement control were dependent on the information relayed by the station master to the station controller and the data was fed in the control chart by the section controller manually.”

Earlier, the train running status used to be updated manually.

Indian Railways On The Way Of Progress and Beyond!

This system was implemented on January 8, on selected mail or express trains on the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Katra-Bandra Terminus, New Delhi-Patna, New Delhi-Amritsar, and Delhi-Jammu routes. The official also said, “The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System was used to warn road users of approaching trains through hooters installed at unmanned road crossings.”

The Indian Railways is also working on a system to avoid accidents at unmanned railway crossings and track train movements.

What do you think of this new initiative? Share with us in the comments section below!