Maligaon, August 03: The Northeast Frontier Railway has taken two major steps for efficient and safe running of both goods and passenger trains earning praise from Railway Ministry. While one of the measures involves innovative use of technology for tackling shortage of crew, the other one involves ensuring booking of crew strictly as per better norms.
Goods train in Lumding – Badarpur Hill Section are run with two locomotives – one in the front and one at the rear. In the month of July, N. F. Railway conducted successful trial of Distributed Power Control System (DPCS) wherein the crew in the front locomotive remotely controls the rear unmanned locomotive and thereby reduces the need for crew by 50%.
This will help the railway to run twice the number of trains with the same crew-strength which in turn will be a boon for states like Tripura, Mizoram and Manipur which depends on Railway for essential goods supply. The successful trial has been lauded by Railway Board and 15 more such DPCS locomotives have been allotted to N. F. Railway.
N.F. Railway has recorded 97.93% figure in the month of July 2018 for booking of crew members of all trains on “Fetch as Per Rule” acquiring the second place among 16 Zonal Railways of Indian Railway. This is significant achievement from the point of view of safety of train running.
The crew of train including drivers, assistant drivers and guards are booked through a computerised system called the Crew Management System (CMS) which has a database of about 89 thousand crew members. The booking procedure has two options – “Fetch Crew as per Rule” option and the “Fetch All” option.
Under the “Fetch Crew As Per Rule” option only those crew will be booked who meet certain criterion like – those who are not due for a periodical medical examination, who are not due for a transport refresher training, who are fit for the locomotive he would run, who have road learning and who have completed technical refresher course. This option also selects crew who had taken adequate rest and free from fatigue. On the other hand, “Fetch All” option will select all those crew who are only not due for periodic medical examination and transport refresher training.
Thus, “Fetch Crew as per Rule” is more stringent in choosing the crew and ensuring safety of train running and Railway Board had in 2016 asked all Zonal Railway to follow this option. Since then the average number of crew booking on “Fetch Crew as per Rule” has increased and as in July the all India average stands at 86.32%. Adherence to this rule helps ensure that drivers are not fatigued and are fully trained for their job which has a huge impact on safe running of trains.
