Railways working on Amrit Yard model to decongest junctions, chokepoints

Poor yard mobility can cancel out benefits of multi-tracking, rlys sets up panel

After Amrit Bharat stations and trains, the Ministry of Railways is now working on the Amrit Yard concept to decongest saturated yards on the railway network, which have been impacting the speeds and movement of trains, despite track expansion works undertaken in the past years.

The ministry has set up a committee consisting of senior railway board officials and a Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) senior executive to realise the Amrit Yard concept.

According to officials, the concept borrows from the model of Smart Yards, which the railways have been aiming to implement for a while to reduce train evacuation time from yards.

The committee has been set up to develop a framework for evaluating yard capacity keeping into account the volume of traffic and traffic management policies such as delay management, physical layout, interlocking, automation technology, and speeds.

The railways are also looking to design a software-based yard mobility module that can be customised to simulate movements across any yard design. It will need to bring all transaction data signal operations and berthing track occupation on a single server at a central location to bring it to life.

According to officials, a real-time simulator would assist the national transporter in improving mobility outcomes on junctions which cannot be expanded in capacity as they are in the middle of towns with no further land available.

“While several interventions have taken place, yard capacity cannot be expected to grow at major junctions at the same pace as track infrastructure due to constraints. The ministry has tried various measures such as automation of yard operations and building satellite yards around saturated primary yards (such as Anand Vihar Terminal for Old Delhi station),” said a senior official aware of the developments.

“With tracks increasing at a major rate, the outcomes on train mobility have not been that efficient as trains on these increased tracks still have to halt at junctions with limited capacity, delaying the process even further,” he added.

The panel is studying national and international best practices for assessing yard mobility and will make recommendations for standardisation of data across signalling systems.

However, former railway officials said board-level interventions would bear little fruit until major projects such as the yard remodelling of Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya (DDU) Junction (formerly Mughalsarai), among others, were completed. 

DDU Junction is the biggest chokepoint on the Indian Railways network due to the volume of trains passing through it. The station contains the largest railway marshalling yard in Asia which caters to around more than 500 trains a month.

Another railway board official, in response to the paper's queries, said that the committee is currently looking into measures such as optimising the placement of freight trains on loop lines (extra lines) so that the maximum number of trains can be accomodated in a smooth manner.

A new junction

> Committee set up with railway officials and CRIS executives to actualise concept 

> Framework to evaluate yard capacity considering traffic volume, layout, automation technologies

>  Software-based yard mobility module to simulate movements across any yard design 

> Real-time simulator to improve mobility outcomes at space-constrained major junctions 

> Studying best practices to standardise data across signalling systems for assessment 

>  Former railway officials say pending remodelling projects are crucial