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Indian Railways is linking its trains to an ISRO satellite. How will it use 1.4 crore daily updates?
TIWN
Indian Railways is linking its trains to an ISRO satellite. How will it use 1.4 crore daily updates?
PHOTO : TIWN

New Delhi, Oct 13 (TIWN): It is 2.58 pm on Monday. An Indian Railways (IR) controller, Kapil Dev, is focusing on one train — No. 22430, Pathankot-Delhi Superfast Express, which has just departed from Karnal station in Haryana.

The next half hour will be critical for Dev, located in New Delhi’s control room, as well as a group of track maintainers waiting on the outskirts of Panipat Junction. By the time the train reaches Panipat, it will have run past four lesser known stations — Bazida Jatan, Gharaunda, Kohand and Babarpur. The track maintainers have asked for what’s called a block in railways jargon, which means no other train will run on that stretch while the block is enforced for repair.

At the control room, Dev has a quick telephonic conversation with the Panipat station master even as he takes a close look at his colour-coded dashboard showing movement of trains — freight, passenger, express — before granting a 15-minute block near Panipat.

For Dev & his fellow controllers taking impromptu and sensitive decisions on train movements in 305 section controls spread across India, what has emerged as a gamechanger is the Indian Space Research Organisation’s GAGAN (GPS Aided GEO Augmented Navigation), a satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS) that was initially developed for the Indian airspace. It now relays train-running data — both location and speed — every 30 seconds, making the system far more accurate and efficient.

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