ON March 4 in Secunderabad, two trains will hurtle towards each other at full speed, one with the Railway Minister on board and the other with the Chairman of the Railway Board. But the two trains won’t collide, thanks to ‘Kavach’. ‘Kavach’, which literally means armour, is being promoted by the Railways as the world’s cheapest automatic train collision protection system. The indigenously-developed Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system has been built to help the Railways achieve the goal of “zero accidents”.

 

Kavach is designed to bring a train to a halt automatically when it notices another train on the same line within a prescribed distance. Trains will also stop on their own when digital system notices any manual error like “jumping” of the red signal or any other malfunction, senior officials said. Once implemented, it will cost Rs 50 lakh per kilometre to operate compared to about Rs 2 crore worldwide, they said. Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw will be in Secunderabad to be part of a trial of the system on the Sanatnagar-Sankarpalli section.

 

“The Railway Minister and CRB (Chairman of the Railway Board) will participate in the trial to be held on March 4. We will showcase how the system works in three situations -- head-on collisions, rear-end collisions, and signal is passed at danger (Spads),” the official said. A signal is passed at danger (SPAD) when a train passes a stop-signal when not allowed to do so. ‘Kavach’ controls the speed of the train by an automatic application of brakes in case the loco pilot fails to do so.