Digital solid state interlocking soon at city rly station

Neeraj Bagga

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Tribune News Service

Amritsar, July 23

The Indian Railways is all set to replace the manual interlocking work at the city railway station with digital solid state interlocking.

After a year, railway officials need not to manually pull lever and other equipment to allow passage to an approaching train.

For the work, 1200-km cabelling is being laid at the yard, which is situated a few meters away from the station. Besides, a building has also been constructed there. The estimate cost of the entire project will be Rs 46 crore.

At present, interlocking is performed manually at two places that are situated at the east and west sides of the railway station. Multiple officials are involved in checking maps, observing the number of trains parked in the station, noting down the departure of these and then giving a green single to an approaching train. Though the entire function is performed in a few minutes but the entire detail is to be kept in mind at the same time so that no two trains run on a same line. There is always a chance of human error in this case.

However, once the entire process is digitalised then the same function can be performed with the pressing of two buttons and with minimum error.

Meanwhile, overhauling of the interlocking work is in full swing at the local railway station, it led to cancellation and diversion of many trains. It had started on July 10 and is expected to be finished by July 29.

The overhauling forced the railway to call off plying of four daily trains, diversion of five other daily trains and short-termination of eight trains.

Chandligarh-Amritsar-Chandligarh Inter-city Express and Chandligarh-Amritsar-Chandligarh Superfast Express have been cancelled while both up and down Tata Moori, Delhi-Pathankot, Jan Nayak have been diverted from Jalandhar during the overhauling period.

Apart from overhauling of interlocking (signalling), upgrade of railway operational facilities is also taking place at the railway station.

The massive overhauling operation forced the authorities to increase the staff strength at the station. As many as 34 stationmasters and 42 points men have been drawn from various stations to carry out the mechanical exercise.

Many passengers are against the long drawn process as they are hassled in getting trains for their intended stations. They said the move reduced the footfall at the station which caused revenue loss to the railways and less sales at vends at platforms.

Railway officials said the overhauling was due for a long time and it was highly needed to ensure the safety of passengers. It was earlier postponed many a time as the limited staff was busy handling a large number of trains and high footfall and carry out various development works at the station.

Now, the system is developing technical glitches routinely which causes hindrance in carrying out various vital operations.

Interlocking (signalling) is an arrangement of signal points and other appliances connected by mechanical and electrical locking so that their operations take place in a proper way to ensure safety. The system is used before giving green signal to any train. It has three stages. Firstly, the route is checked, then it (route) is locked and finally signal is downed. In case, the schedule of the train is changed then the same steps are followed in descending order. The last step being taken up first and the rest accordingly.