Terming the indigenously developed Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system–‘Kavach’ as a phenomenal improvement in safety and a great contribution to accident prevention, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has said the technology will be implemented over the entire rail network in the country and will also be exported to the world in the next coming years, even as he had a first-hand experience of the collision aversion mechanism by being part of a live demo here.
Vaishnaw, who travelled in a locomotive and inspected the working of ‘Kavach’, including an on-site demonstration of a head-on collision, said it is a significant milestone in the history of Indian Railways. The highlight of the demonstration was the avoidance of the head-on collision by ‘Kavach’ without manual intervention.
This was demonstrated between Gullaguda, Chitgidda railway stations on Lingampalli, Vikarabad section of Secunderabad Division in South Central Railway (SCR), with Vaishnaw travelling in a locomotive in one direction, while Vinay Kumar Tripathi, Chairman and CEO, Railway Board was travelling in another on the opposite direction on the same track and ‘Kavach’ worked as desired to stop the trains and avert a collision.
The Minister witnessed how the technology avoids trains passing Signal at Danger, how their speed is automatically regulated while passing through loop lines, and how to rear-end collision is how rear-end collisions are automatically avoided. Kavach, which literally means armour, is being promoted by the Railways as the world’s cheapest automatic train collision protection system
