The safety performance of the North Central Railway (NCR) has shown an improvement by 57 per cent which means that the accidents on the zone have decline by the same percentage during the last financial year that ended on 31 March.
On the other hand North Frontier Railway NFR has achieved the target of elimination of all unmanned level crossings in group “B” route on 31st March, adhering to the target set by Railway board.
The North Central Railway (NCR) claimed that it took proactive steps for safety in train operations that yielded handsome results in the financial year 2017-18, which has just closed on 31 March.
NCR GM MC Chauhan, while talking to reporters, on Sunday said that this improvement in safety was achieved by regular weekly safety conferences in which all the safety related issues were discussed threadbare and remedial actions to be taken were advised.
NCR also launched Mission Zero SPAD (Signal Passing At Danger) in February 2017. “This initiative gave spectacular results by achieving Zero SPAD by the loco Pilots belonging to NCR on NCR in the financial year 2017-18,” said MC Chauhan, GM NCR.
NCR claimed that it also keep conducting intensive inspections especially night, footplate and surprise inspections by officers and supervisors in addition to training and sensitization of frontline staff in safety-related matters.
NF Railway has 230 kms of Group “B” route between Malda Town and New Jalpaiguri. There are 22 un-manned level crossings in this section, all of which have been eliminated. 21 of them by manning i.e. by posting gateman and 1 by diversion.
Presence of un-manned level crossing is a major safety concern, that too in a high speed and high density traffic route. Elimination of these 22 un-manned crossings has addressed this serious safety concern for the railway.It is to be mentioned that NF Railway has so far eliminated 229 un-manned level crossing s during 2017-18. All un-manned level crossing, in all routes of the railway are to be eliminated by 31 March, 2019.
Railway routes are classified into various categories based on the future maximum permissible speed i.e. Group “A” with sanctioned speed of 160 km per hour, Group “B” with sanctioned speed of 130 km per hour, Group “C”, Group “D”, Group “E” etc.