All trains under the Indian Railways will soon be equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS) devices, Railway Board Chairman Vinod Kumar Yadav said. The plan is likely to be executed by the end of FY20.
Commenting on the development, a senior official of the Railways said the Indian Railways will be able to determine the real-time position of the trains will the system.
A part of the Railways' Real-time Train Information System (RTIS), the step will be implemented in collaboration with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and would help improve the punctuality of trains.
"Position and speed of the train will be relayed through ISRO satellites to the Control Office Application (COA) system of Railways for automatic plotting of control charts," the Railway official said.
There are a number of other steps that are in the pipeline for Railways, which includes setting up WiFi and installing CCTV cameras at majot junctions.
According to what Yadav says, Wi-Fi facilities would be equipped at all major railway stations by September. On the plans to install CCTVs, he said the cameras would be placed by the end of the financial year.
Meanwhile, the East Coast Railway (ECoR) aims to transport more than 200 million tonnes of freight in this fiscal, the official said.
To identify the need to run more trains from Bhubaneswar, the Indian Railways had also sanctioned a survey this year, to run freight trains bypassing Bhubaneswar and Cuttack.
Backing the work by ECoR, Yadav said an MoU, highlighting the redevelopment of the main entrance of Bhubaneswar railway station, will be signed with the state government.
"The second entry from platform number six will also be developed and the fund has been allocated for improvement of road connectivity to Bhubaneswar station," he said.
According to Yadav, the Railways is mainly focussing on the development of infrastructure as significant growth in Railway traffic has been recorded in the country in the past 25 to 30 years.
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