The Hindu Business Line : Where is your parcel now?<br>Rlys pilot project will use RFID to track wagons

THE Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) plans to float a tender soon for implementing radio frequency identification (RFID) technology in the East Coast Railway system for tracking wagons. The pilot project will involve tracking about 1,000 wagons by embedding an RFID tag or chip in all the wagons and providing staff at the freight sheds with handheld devices that read these chips and register the data. At present, the wagons are tracked manually.

"We have got approval from the Railway Board to go ahead with the pilot project," Mr M.R. Ramakrishnan, Managing Director, CRIS, told Business Line. Asked about the financial size of the project, he said: "An amount of Rs 2 crore has been sanctioned."

As per the project, about 1,000 BOBRNS, or open wagons with bottom discharge system, primarily used between Talcher and Paradip, will be fitted with chips. Following this, details regarding the wagon serial number, wagon make and the owner Railway can be fed into the Indian Railways system to help track the wagons accurately. The present system of tracking wagons on a manual basis causes delays and there are chances of human error.

If the pilot project is successful, the scheme will be extended to the entire wagon fleet of Indian Railways.

In the railways, RFID tags attached to the rolling stock can provide accurate in-transit information about its fleet of equipment, resulting in improved services, scheduling and tracking and in reduced manual errors.

CRIS is a project-oriented autonomous body engaged in the development of major computer systems for the Railways. It works towards avoiding duplication of efforts by individual zonal Railways, and ensures standardisation of computer hardware and software in the Railway system.

Moreover, the Ministry also plans to start tracking parcel bookings using RFID tags and readers. The Railways leases out certain sections of passenger trains to courier companies. Courier companies can track the exact movement of their parcels using the RFID technology.

For parcel tracking, the RFID tags will be attached to the parcels before they are put on the train and will be taken off them at the destination stations. To start with, parcel traffic on the Kolkata-Delhi route trains will be tracked.

Computerised control charting: CRIS also plans to adopt computerised control charting in an increasing number of areas to help track the movement of trains. With computerised charting, the Railways can track train movements with higher accuracy as the data on positions of train in transit would be fed into a central system. "With computerised charting, the arrival and departure timings of both freight and passenger trains can be arrived at with a higher level of accuracy and much quicker," said Mr Ramakrishnan.

At present, computerised control charting is done in Madurai and on the entire section between Howrah and Thiruvananthapuram. Control over the movement of trains is achieved through manual charting by the staff in most of the divisional control offices.