Railway Minister Vaishnaw travels in Kavach-fitted train for efficiency trial in Rajasthan

New Delhi: Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Tuesday travelled in Kavach-fitted train for a trial to check the efficiency of the automatic train protection system at Sawai Madhopur in Rajasthan.

The Minister boarded the Kavach-fitted engine of a train at 4 pm at the Sawai Madhopur railway station and travelled for 45 minutes up to Indargarh Railway station.

"In these 45 minutes, the train run in Kavach-equipped section at different speeds and it stopped on its own at red signals without applying brake by the loco pilot," said the railway official.

Total 7 tests conducted and in all seven, the test was successful, said the railway official.

The Kavach system, also known as an Automatic Train Protection System , has been developed by the Research Designs and Standards Organisation , and it can apply brakes automatically in an emergency when a train driver fails to act in time.

The Railway Ministry has been working on this project for the last eight years to bring the rail network under the Kavach system in a phased manner.

After successful test, Vaishnaw said that work is going on to operationalise the Kavach system on the 3,000-km long Mumbai-Delhi and Delhi-Kolkata rail routes and is expected to finish by March next year.

Vaishnaw added that the Kavach advanced version 4.0 was approved by the Research Designs and Standards Organisation on July 17, 2024, and large-scale installation would begin soon.

According to the Railway Ministry, Kavach's first field trials on passenger trains were started in February 2016 and based on the experience gained and the Independent Safety Assessment of the system by a third party, three firms were approved in 2018-19 for supply of Kavach.

"Kavach has so far been deployed on 1465 Route km and 139 locomotives on South Central Railway," an official from the Railway Ministry said.