Western Railway's new yellow device to detect faults in a moving train

Travelling on trains on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad/Delhi route can be safer. The Western Railway, in a bid to improve safety on tracks, has installed a train mapping device for the first time. The idea has been implemented at Udhna and will be followed at Mumbai Central and at other junction stations through which long-distance trains ply. The device can detect flaws in wheels, in the brakes, and in the gear of the train. Such faults can at times lead to accidents.

The Western Railway has installed a yellow coloured device on the tracks that can read a train even at a speed of 200 kilometre per hour. "Currently, trains are monitored physically by the staff. Now, with the device being placed, it will automatically inspect the entire train and even record data. Thus, it will improve safety," Ravinder Bhakar, Chief PRO, Western Railway, said.

This means that railway officials will have an actual idea of the condition of a train as the device will take pictures of affected portions and send it across to the other end where officials monitor the functioning. The device can prevent an accident and immediate action can be taken based on its records. This device will be placed a few metres ahead of a railway station.

The new machine will find out if there is anything wrong with the train like issues with the wheels, or if any pipe or equipment is protruding out of the coaches, brake binding, hot axles and so on. It can identify any serious threat to the safety of passengers.

Sources said that manual inspection is highly subjective and unreliable. This device has infrared temperature sensors that will detect the condition of wheels. The high-definition camera will capture any issue at all. The machine has a system to generate a separate log file for every train and can store information of at least 1,000 trains. This data can also be transferred.