Southern Railway organises webinar on adoption of latest technologies in Signal & Telecommunication

Signal & Telecommunication (S&T) department of Southern Railway organised a webinar under the aegis of IRSTE (Institute of Railway Signal & Telecommunication Southern Railway) Chennai chapter on 20-11-2020. The webinar was webcast live on the internet for the benefit of a wider audience.

Shri. Pradeep Kumar, Member / Infrastructure, Railway Board was the Chief Guest on the occasion. Shri. John Thomas, General Manager/Southern Railway & Shri Anshul Gupta Additional Member/ Signals were the guests of honour.

  • Shri Pradeep Kumar, Member Infrastructure/ Railway Board launched the IRSTE/Chennai Chapter website on the public domain. 
  • Speaking on the occasion from New Delhi over video conferencing he appreciated the efforts of Southern Railway in absorbing latest Technologies & organising seminars and webinars for the dissemination of knowledge. 
  • He mentioned that Railways is planning to invest 13.5 Lakh crores of rupees in modernizing the infrastructure from National Infrastructure fund in the next five years.

  • He emphasized that to reduce the load on maintenance of assets, Artificial intelligence (AI) will play a major role by automating the maintenance processes. 
  • As a pilot project already 100 stations across Indian Railway network have been identified for predictive maintenance of S&T assets. 
  • 10 stations in Southern Railway which are on Golden Quadrilateral and Golden Diagonal (GQ & GD) routes are part of this pilot project. 
  • These stations are:
    • Basin bridge
    • Korukkupet
    • Tiruvottiyur
    • Ennore
    • Sulurpetta
    • Nayudupetta
    • Avadi
    • Kadambattur
    • Tiruttani
    • Puttur
  • Unlike the present system of carrying out maintenance in a periodical manner, a predictive maintenance system will continuously monitor the condition of the equipment and generate the required alerts so that need based maintenance can be carried out. 
  • This will result in huge savings in maintenance costs and also reduce the asset failures.
  • Shri. John Thomas, General Manager/S.Rly, Guest of Honour addressed the participants. 
  • He highlighted the various achievements of S&T department of Southern Railway in adopting & applying latest technologies in day to day working.
  • Shri Anshul Gupta, Additional Member/ Signals informed the gathering about the developments taking place in the field of AI in Indian Railways. 
  • He further conveyed that the specification for data acquisition is under deliberation by Railway Board & will be finalized shortly.
  • In his presidential address Shri R.Baskaran, Principal Chief Signal & Telecommunication highlighted the efforts taken by IRSTE/Chennai Chapter in educating the members about the latest technologies.

The full day webinar had three sessions and a total of 11 papers covering the entire gamut of data analytics & Artificial Intelligence Solutions.

Recent Achievement:

Electronic Interlocking is progressively installed at Railway stations over Southern Railway.  Electronic Interlocking creates a synergic relationship between signals and points improving the safety and punctuality of trains.

  • Under the guidance and mentorship of Shri. R.Baskaran, Principal Chief Signal & Telecommunications Engineer, Southern Railway, self reliance o­n Electronic Interlocking (EI) in Medha make EI was achieved in Madurai Division by successfully performing and testing circuit alteration at Ayyalur station. 
  • In order to carry out the EI alteration, a model Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) set-up was commissioned at the Office of Sr Section Engineer/Signal at Dindigul.  
  • This set up comprises of o­ne Personal Computer (PC) for operating the station yard, another PC for simulation tool (FSP) and both are connected through RS232 cable working in unison.
  • FAT set-up at Dindigul is a pioneer work which will be used as a training module for Railway Engineers to perform circuit alteration and FAT testing thereby enriching their knowledge and capacity and also it will be a model architecture for carrying out further alterations in Electronic Interlocking at various stations leading Southern Railway towards achieving Aatma Nirbhar Bharat.

Source: Southern Railway-Update