Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said Kavach's journey began in 2014-15. (document)
To date, Kavach has been deployed on 1,465 lines and 144 locomotives (including EMU rakes) on South Central Railway. Ashwini Vaishnaw said bids have been accepted for Delhi-Chennai, Mumbai-Chennai sections and all automatic signalised sections
Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Wednesday that after getting the approval, the Railway Ministry is ready to install Kavach on 10,000 locomotives and all new projects will now be equipped with the protection system.
He also told the media that the installation work of Kavach on the two high-density routes Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah will be completed during this financial year.
“After upgrading to Kavach 4.0, segmentation debugging will begin immediately,” he said.
Kavach 4.0 covers all terrains of the railway network – from deserts to forests, from mountains to coasts, from cities to rural areas.
To date, Kavach has been deployed on 1,465 lines and 144 locomotives (including electric multi-set rakes) on the South Central Railway, according to the ministry's latest figures. Tenders have been accepted for Delhi-Chennai and Mumbai-Chennai sections and all automatic signalised sections, he said.
Last month, News18 reported that the Research Design and Standards Organization (RDSO) had approved Kavach 4.0 and is now considering final installation. However, as technology advances, there will be room for upgrades in the future. “With the approval of Kavach 4.0 by RDSO, the Ministry of Railways has approved the installation of Kavach 4.0 on 10,000 locomotives. This will facilitate the rapid installation of Kavach across the entire network in a few years.
Sharing the Kawachi schedule, the minister said the journey started in 2014-15 when a 250-km-long pilot scheme section was installed on the South Central Railway.
In 2015-16, field trials were conducted for the first time on passenger trains, while version 3.2 of the Kavach specifications was finalized in 2017-18. The next year, RDSO approved three companies to install the technology.
In July 2020, Kavach was announced as the national automatic train protection system and by March 2022, the system had been installed on a further 1,200 kilometers of line.
Cavac
Kavach is an indigenously developed automatic train protection (ATP) system. This is a highly technology-intensive system that requires the highest level of safety certification.
The technology helps locomotive operators operate trains within prescribed speed limits, automatically applies the brakes if the locomotive operator fails to do so, and can also help trains operate safely in bad weather.
Kavach has been certified to the highest safety integrity level – SIL4 – by an independent safety assessment agency and uses its non-SIL functionality to reduce the possibility of train collisions on street sections and station routes. Therefore, Kavach has the potential to be adopted by other countries.
The ministry informed the Lok Sabha last month that the progress of major projects related to Kawachi is as follows: laying of optical cables (4,275 kilometers); installation of telecommunications towers (364); provision of equipment at stations (285); provision of locomotive equipment (319 locomotives) ) and install trackside equipment (1,384 route kilometers).
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