GUWAHATI: The Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) has tightened the control on train monitoring with involvement of senior officials to move the trains on time.
As many as ten trains including the prestigious Rajdhanis, Shatabdis and trains of NE India like NE Express, Kamrup Express and Avadh Assam Express are now being directly monitored by the General Manager of the zone on real time basis, according to the CPRO of the NFR, P J Sharma.
A 15-day punctuality drive has been started during which all the mail express trains running within the zone will be foot plated by officers of the N F Railway in its jurisdiction. Foot plating is the practice where the officer is present in the cabin of the driver during the run for real time monitoring of the aspects like signal visibility, observation of safety protocols like signal exchange, and riding quality of the track, taking off of signals in time and avoidable en route detention.
The movement of trains in 19 stations of the zone including Katihar, New Coochbehar, New Bongaigaon, Guwahati, Kamakhya, Agartala, Naharlagun, Dibrugarh, Ledo, New Tinsukia, Farkating and Mariani is now being monitored through sensors called Data Loggers. This means that in these stations, the timing of movement of trains is being feed to a central system without any human interference. Thus the figures of arrival, departure timings of trains can no longer be altered or manipulated and only the actual timings will be reported.
It is to be mentioned that in a meeting conducted through video conference by Chairman Railway Board, the General Managers of railways have been asked to ensure that traffic blocks taken for the purpose of asset renewal and maintenance are cleared on time and speed restrictions imposed time to time are critically reviewed.
General Manager N F Railway, Sanjive Roy also stated that Railway Board was favourably considering the allotment of more DEMU rakes to the zone which will result in considerable improvement in the punctuality of local short distance trains since DEMU rakes unlike conventional rakes do not require reversal and can accelerate and decelerate faster.
Section controllers who man the Divisional control rooms, 24X7, have also been counselled to be extra vigilant and plan all crossings judiciously to ensure maximum punctuality.
Granting of traffic blocks has been accorded the utmost priority to ensure that assets like tracks and bridges have zero overdue maintenance. In NFR there are number of ongoing infra structural works like doubling and signal up gradation works and works for elimination of level crossing which are being given priority to ensure timely completion of connectivity projects. These works being executed in close vicinity of running tracks are to be executed in properly planned traffic blocks to be granted by rescheduling trains.
However, by strict monitoring of assets like loco motives and signal systems, failures are being reduced to achieve the objective of safe and timely movement of trains across the zone.