Over 2643 km track renewal carried out till October, says Railway ministry

The Ministry of Railways on Friday said that as many as 2643 km track renewal has been carried out up to October across the country.

"During 2018-19, 4181 km track renewal had been carried out. For the current year i.e. 2019-20, 2643 km track renewal has been carried out up to October," the ministry said in a statement.

It added: "In order to improve safety, modern track structure consisting of Prestressed Concrete Sleeper (PSC), 60kg, 90 or higher Ultimate Tensile Strength (UTS) rails, fan-shaped layout turnout on PSC sleepers, Steel Channel Sleepers on girder bridges is used while carrying out primary track renewals."

Further, it said that Ultrasonic Flaw Detection (USFD) testing of rails to detect flaws and timely removal of defective rails are carried out to avoid incidents of derailments and to improve the safety of the railway tracks.

"USFD Vehicular testing system has been introduced and implemented successfully on Northern Railway. Moreover, GPS trackers are being provided to keyman and patrolmen to monitor their movement and to report any unsafe condition noticed by them instantaneously," the ministry said.

It added: "Track management system has been introduced on Indian Railways for development of database and decision support system and to decide/rationalize maintenance requirement and optimize inputs."

Safety drives and inspections at regular intervals are carried out to monitor and educate staff for the observance of safe practices, the ministry said.

Adding that long rail panels of 260M/130M length are being manufactured at the steel plants to minimize the number of Alumino Thermit joints in the track, the ministry said: "Provision of Thick Web Switches (TWS) is planned for all important routes of Indian Railways. To expedite the provision of TWS, procurement of Thick Web Switches has been decentralized to zonal railways."

"To look out for weld/rail fractures for ensuring safety, the ministry said that cold weather patrolling of the railway tracks is done during the coldest part of the night during winter," read the release.

( With inputs from ANI )