Railways plans more safety measures

The Railways plans to put in place a new monitoring mechanism for detection of any glitch in the rolling stock as well as localised monitoring of tracks among other safety measures.
Railways have also taken several other measures for passenger's convenience which are expected to be implemented shortly, Railway Board Member (Mechanical) Hemant Kumar said here today.
The condition based monitoring mechanism would have two systems - an onboard system which would detect glitches roller bearings, coach suspension and localised track while the roadside system would detect wheel defects, hanging parts, broken springs, among others, Kumar said.
He said that the prototype of coach, capable of running at a speed of up to 200 km, being developed at Rail Coach Factory at Rae Bareli is expected to roll out by this year.

A dual purpose locomotive, capable of running both on electricity as well as diesel, is also under development at Diesel Locomotive Works, Varanasi, he said, adding this loco will not only make operations more flexible by increasing the throughput, but also result in substantial fuel saving.
On the issue of passenger convenience, Railways Board member said that plans were afoot to provide water level indicators in coach water tanks to reduce water wastage.

Railways has provided onboard house keeping services (OBHS) on a total of 571 trains so far including 46 the ongoing fiscal and another 140 more trains have been identified for this facility.

The criterion for provision of OBHS has recently been revised to cover all important trains now, Kumar said.
This would facilitate around 414 more trains taking the total number of trains with such facility to 1,125 by 2016-17, he said.
As part of the clean train station scheme, trials for garbage disposable bags on trains have been commenced on Central and Northern Railway, among other cleanliness related measures, Kumar said.
He also said that so far 25,500 bio-toilets have been fitted in 8,700 coaches with 5,700 of them being this year alone.