Vaishnaw to travel in Kavach fitted train for efficiency trial in Rajasthan

Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw will travel in a Kavach-fitted train on Tuesday afternoon for a trial to check the efficiency of the automatic train protection system at Sawai Madhopur in Rajasthan.

According to railway officials, Vaishnaw will board the Kavach-fitted engine of a train at 4 pm at the Sawai Madhopur railway station and travel for 45 minutes up to Indargarh Railway station.

"In these 45 minutes, the train will run in (a) Kavach-equipped section at different speeds to see if it stops on its own at red signals without applying brake by the loco pilot," the official said, adding that a team of media persons will also accompany the minister for the trial.

The Kavach system, also known as an Automatic Train Protection System (ATP), has been developed by the Research Designs and Standards Organisation (RDSO), and it can apply brakes automatically in an emergency when a train driver fails to act in time.

The Railway Ministry has been working on this project for the last eight years to bring the rail network under the Kavach system in a phased manner.

Recently, in a press briefing, Vaishnaw had said that work is going on to operationalise the Kavach system on the 3,000-km long Mumbai-Delhi and Delhi-Kolkata rail routes and is expected to finish by March next year.

Vaishnaw added that the Kavach advanced version 4.0 was approved by the Research Designs and Standards Organisation (RDSO) on July 17, 2024, and large-scale installation would begin soon.

According to Vaishnaw, the Kavach 4.0 would be able to tackle all kinds of communication challenges in all geographical conditions, such as hilly terrain, forest, coastal and desert areas, among others.

According to the Railway Ministry, Kavach's first field trials on passenger trains were started in February 2016 and based on the experience gained and the Independent Safety Assessment of the system by a third party, three firms were approved in 2018-19 for supply of Kavach.

"Kavach has so far been deployed on 1465 Route km and 139 locomotives (including Electric Multiple Unit rakes) on South Central Railway," an official from the Railway Ministry said.