Tired of waiting for information on trains? Or travelling by train and tired of waiting for it to reach the next station?
Nowadays, you have varied choice for getting information on current location of train. Gone are the days of depending on phone lines and boards at stations to ascertain location of trains. Online tracking system and also SMS system of train tracking has made things much simpler.
Indian railways cart around 20 million passengers daily between 7000 stations. It is a humongous task to keep the network running with clockwork precision. Hence, there are inevitable delays, cancellations and diversions.
As such one waiting to board the train, or waiting inside train to get to a station or waiting to receive family or friends from trains will find useful the information on the current status of trains.
In 2011, the Indian Railways made efforts for a solution to this problem. It flagged of Rs110 crores system that is satellite based instead of manual tracking of trains to pinpoint train location of Indian Railways. The Real Time Train Information System (RTIS) intends to give information on current train running information to the general public via SMS (mobile phones), Internet, call centers and train indication boards located at stations. It also aims to provide information for on-board passengers through display systems provided inside coaches.
The RTIS aims to replace the manual recording system that connects around 8000 trains across the 7000 stations across the country and to help tracking train location in India. Prior to RTIS, station masters called control rooms in the division headquarters to indicate that a particular train has passed his station. But this manual system was woefully inadequate.
The railways made efforts to set up loco devices in all locomotives as well as stations to get current movement data through satellites. Details of trains like speed, names, duration and all other relevant information were to be provided by system. The RTIS was first experimented on Rajdhani and Shatabdi trains and was quite successful.
This system developed by the collaboration of the RDSO with IIT Kanpur uses Global System (GS) and Global Positioning System (GPS) for mobile technology of communication to convey information. The Railways has completed the digital mapping of most stations. The system also tracks freight trains.
The RTIS provided the first service for online train location tracking in India. Another advantage is the efficiency in running of trains because the movement data are made available to servers of Indian Railways. Information on real time basis about trains like speed, location, direction can be utilized to improve efficiency of trains in every section.
For linking various data of stations, signal information, yard details, city and infrastructure details like hospital details, digital maps can be used especially in times of emergency.
In March 2012, Indian Railways announced that it would soon start the real-time tracking of Indian trains on Google maps, which could be used through laptops and mobile devices. The technology arm of the Indian railways- Centre for Railway Information system (CRIS) in collaboration with the ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization ) developed a GPS-based solution that can provide the exact location of a train on real time basis, which has an accuracy of ten meters and latency period of 2 minutes.
The GPS devices costing around Rs.1 lac per train was fitted first in 100 trains mainly to help in avoiding rail accidents and collisions. It will help trains assess each other’s location and divert before an accident. The breaking distance for freight trains is 1.4 km while for passenger trains is 1 km. The government was especially concerned about accidents. In recent times, over 15% of train accidents have taken place in India.
Passengers can also view real-time locations of their trains as CRIS has merged the GPS application with Google Maps. Insat-3C satellite of ISRO will help locate the position of moving trains. ISRO is aiming at reducing the accuracy of distance to 3 m as it is critical in avoiding accidents.
A successful GPS based system helps trains run at high speed. It also helps plan the transit of trains better in inclement weather. It replaced the manual system of train scheduling. Indian Railways have around 75 control offices for 7000 stations. The GPS system helps make things simple.
In October 2012, CRIS announced the setting up of the new RailRadar system. This is an application, which permits commuters to find the location of the train on a map and keep track of running train network in real time. RailRadar has been developed by the team of CRIS and RailYatri.in.
RailRadar features high functionality and user-friendly interface. Zoom in and Zoom out facility to get details of stations and trains available in this application. Customers can search for trains and station details and get specific details like current position of the train, its route and its stoppages. RailRadar also indicates details of late running trains and timely train schedules. RailRadar also communicates to the public unusual events like train cancellation, diversion or accident so that all can make efforts and plans accordingly.
RailRadar provides information on the status of trains by marking late trains with red color and timely trains in blue color on its map. Currently, it is configured to refresh/ update itself every 5 minutes.
The Indian Railways also set up a new version of its online service of trainenquiry.com, an application called as National Train Enquiry system, which offers live information on the several thousands of trains in our country.
Another source of information on current trains status is the IRCTC website. IRCTC stands for Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation. One can track trains via IRCTC train location status. All you need to do is to log on to irctc.co.in and follow user-friendly guidelines.
Thus, modern technology has made tracking of trains exceedingly simpler than ever before.