Role of the Signal & Telecommunication department

Train Operations
Signalling Systems for Safe and smooth train operations.
Optimum utilization of line capacity.
Train Warning and Protection systems.

Telecommunications
Providing telecommunication infrastructure for :
Control Communication for Efficient operation of trains.
Passenger Reservation System (PRS)
Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS)
Freight Operation Information System (FOIS)
Crew Management System (CMS)
Coaching Operating Information System (COIS)
Management of EDP Network over ECR
Management of Railways Information Network (RAILNET)
Railways telephones, networked with all India Railway network.

Passenger Amenities
Signal & Telecom Department provides various passengers amenities for the benefit of travelling
public:

Public Address System is provided at various stations to announce the arrival &
departure of trains and other information required by traveling passengers.

Train Arrival Departure Information is provided through Rail Sampark Centralized

Service 139.

Train Indication Boards are provided for indicating the train timing and platform
numbers at important Railway stations.

Elements of Safety in Train Operation

Track Circuiting

Track circuiting is a basic safety device used in signalling systems. It monitors

occupancy of a section of track and prevents clearance of signal in the event of the
track section being occupied by another train. This is a fail-safe device, which in the
condition of its failure prevents the signals to be cleared.
Axle counters
It is another important safety device used for detecting presence of train in a track
section. This device counts the number of train axles entering and exiting through a
track section and controls the associated signal.

Block Working
It is an arrangement to control the entry and exit of train in a section called block
section between any two adjacent stations. This maintains space interval between two
following trains. It provides safety by preventing the second train to be sent into the
section between the stations unless and until the previous train has cleared the section.

Driver to Guard communication

Driver to Guard communication has been provided for running trains using VHF
walkie-talkie sets, for better co-ordination in controlling of the train.

Interlocking
Interlocking is a mechanism to check the route the train is going to traverse before
clearing the signal and to prevent the clearing of signal when it is unsafe for the
movement. It eliminates human error and ensures safety in train operations. Two
types of interlocking arrangements are in vogue depending on the size of the station
yard.
Panel Interlocking

Panel interlocking is provided for smaller yards. It is a signalling system, which

assures the best standard of safety and eliminates the accidents arising out of human
errors.

Route Relay Interlocking

Route Relay Interlocking is provided at major junctions and yards where large
numbers of train movements are required.

Safety at Level Crossing Gates

All the level crossing gates in the station area and other important gates in the route are
controlled by the signals. These gates are called interlocked gates and provide best safety for the
road users. Provision of telephone communication at manned level crossing gates is a safety tool
to ensure closure and opening of gates at appropriate time. On this railway all the manned level
crossing gates have already been provided with telephone communication facility with the
controlling stations.
 PRS – PASSENGER RESERVATION SYSTEM
About PRS

Reserved travel by Indian Railways is facilitated by the Passenger Reservation System (PRS). PRS provides
reservation services to nearly 1.5 to 2.2 million passengers a day on over 2500 trains running throughout
the country. The PRS Application CONCERT (Country-wide Network of Computerized Enhanced Reservation
and Ticketing) is the world’s largest online reservation application, developed and maintained by CRIS. The
system currently operates from 5 Data centers. The server clusters are connected together by a core
network that enables universal terminals across country, through which the travelling public can reserve a
berth on any train, between any pair of station for any date and class.

PRS web site was awarded Web Ratna Platinum Icon Award in year 2009 under Citizen Centric Service
category. PRS application has been awarded by Computer Society of India for best IT usage in the year
1999. If you have any further questions or suggestions email us at prs@cris.org.in.

Services

Reservation System

The PRS is available at over 8000 counters in more than 2380 locations throughout the country, including all
major stations, and important non-railhead locations such as tourist centers and district headquarters. The
PRS services are available to passengers for 23 hours in a day. Passengers can reserve a berth for any train
90 days in advance. In addition to the railway counters, multiple delivery channels have been provided to
Rail passengers to access the PRS services. Enquiry services through Internet were launched in year 2000.
Touch screen, IVRS and Display boards are enabled at major booking location for details on train
accommodation availability. I- Ticketing and E-ticketing and through Internet was launched in year 2002
and 2005 respectively. Booking through Post offices was launched in year 2007.Enquiry services through
139 were launched in year 2007. PRS ticketing through Mobile VAN (Mushkil Assan) was launched in 2009.

Automating Ticket Checking

To improve the transparency in seat allocation after charting and increase the berth utilization, PRS is in the
process of automating the operations of TTE. It is aimed that the passenger attendance is marked by the
TTE on a Hand Held Device instead of a paper chart and the berths, vacant on account of not turned up
passengers are transferred to a central database. These berths can be utilized by TTE for allocation to
RAC/WL passengers or to WL passengers/ with current Ticket intending to board the Train from next
stopping station. This will also speed up the refund process as the data regarding not turned up passengers
will be directly transferred to Refund System. Hand Held Terminals (HHTs) are already functioning in 12 pair
of trains. Indian Railways plans to extend this facility to another 70 pair of Rajdhani and Shatabdi Trains

Technology

CONCERT Architecture

CONCERT architecture is based on the state of the art technology using 3-tier client-server distributed
transaction processing paradigm. The system has distributed architecture with 5 server clusters placed in
server centers in five cities: New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Secunderabad. The server clusters
are connected together by a core network based on a mesh of 02×02 Mbps leased lines. It is an on-line
client server application developed in ‘C’ on OVMS using RTR (Reliable Transaction Router) as middleware. It
is currently hosted on state of art converged infrastructure (Itanium blade servers).

Server Blade servers having 64-Bit Itanium 9340 Processor

Operating System Open VMS 8.4

Database In-house CRIS proprietary

Middleware HP Reliable Transaction Router (RTR)

Frontend DEC Forms, C and FORTRAN as development tools

Communication Systems CISCO routers using 2Mbps DOT lines

Network Topology Mesh Topology

Network protocol TCPIP, DECNET

Hand Held Terminals for Ticket Checking

The application is developed in-house based on IBM Lotus Expeditor technology. The mobile technologies
used are Lotus mobile connect version 6.1.1 for VPN, Lotus expeditor synch server (version 6.2) and DB2E
on mobile devices. IBM Tivoli directory server LDAP (version 6.0) is being used for user authentication. The
servers are Xeon (Dell power edge 2950) with OS - RHEL 4 update 4. The RDBMS is DB2 version 9.1.5 and
Application server - IBM WAS 7.0.0.9.
 UTS - UNRESERVED TICKETING SYSTEM
About UTS

Twenty one million passengers travel daily on Indian Railways using the unreserved journey facility. An
unreserved ticket authorizes these journeys but as the name implies, offers no reserved seats or berths. The
ticket is not specific to a train service either. This facility is predominantly used by commuters and suburban
travellers – over short distances where assured seating is not a necessity. It is also available to lower
income groups travelling longer distances and connects the rural hinterland to districts, towns and cities.
Tickets are issued to the unreserved passenger any time of day or night as booking offices remain open 24
hours a day, seven days a week.

The Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) caters to this segment of the market and seeks to provide a
centrally administered computerized ticketing system over the entire Indian Railways. Today more than
ninety percent of the unreserved tickets are sold through this system. The ability of the system to deliver
ticketing at remote corners of the country and provide uninterrupted services everywhere has been lauded
by the Government of India. The project, along with the CRIS team responsible for its initial design and
implementation, won the Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration. Details regarding
the project are provided here and, if you have any questions or want to contact us, please email us
at uts@cris.org.in.

Services

Unreserved Ticketing at Railway Counters

The unreserved ticketing system began as a pilot project in August 2002 on Northern Railway. A precursor
to this centralized ticketing system was the Self Printing Ticket Machines (SPTMs), a standalone system that
was phased out with the arrival of UTS. Initially the central hardware architecture was supported with
station level servers to ensure business continuity in the event of network failures. The booking office
operator dispensed the tickets using dumb terminals and dot matrix printers. Over the years with improved
reliability of the network a newer design came into force with the introduction of thin clients provided to the
operator. For details regarding these, please check out our Technology section.

The graph below shows the growth of the service from 2002. Today the service is available at nearly 5690
locations over all the 16 Zones of the Indian Railways. The Zonal Railways are responsible for manning the
UTS counters and running the services, while CRIS maintains the application and ensures continuity of
business at the system level. There are nearly 100 ticket types that are sold through the system – based on
class of travel, concessions for senior citizens and children, concessions to other categories, and season
tickets. The business rules and fares are determined by the policies of the Ministry of Railways.

Jan Sadharan Ticket Booking Sewa (JTBS)

Ticketing services for the unreserved sector were also outsourced as per Railway Board’s Jan Sadharan
Ticket Booking Sewa (JTBS) scheme launched in January 2007. Currently JTBS outlets are available at more
than 609 locations. These outlets provide self employment opportunities and the operators are offered a
commission per passenger. The terminals at these counters connect to the central servers for issuing the
tickets.

Automatic Ticket Vending Machines

Apart from manned counters for dispensing tickets, there are also automatic ticket vending machines
(ATVM) that are operated using smart cards and touch screens. This technology was first introduced in
Mumbai in Oct’2007 and its success led to proliferation to other metropolitan cities. Chennai, Secunderabad,
Delhi and Kolkata are the other cities where these machines are currently commissioned. The table below
shows the number of machines at each of these regions and the average daily sales as in July 2013.

Zone Number of Commissioned ATVMs Daily Avg Earning

Northern Railway 75 741023

Central Railway 385 2464443

Western Railway 205 409358

South Central Railway 70 895908

Southern Railway 95 606121

Eastern Railway 95 120285

South Eastern Railway 73 337194

 East Coast Railway 31 274379

Total 1029 5848711

Mobile-Van Ticketing : ‘Mushkil Aasan’

In order to make ticketing a more convenient experience, the concept of Mobile Counters deployed in Vans
was made operational in Jan 2010. As a pilot, one such Van is functional in Delhi and Kolkata issuing both
Un-reserved and Reserved Tickets. This model makes use of GPRS/CDMA technologies for connecting to the
server.

Currency Operated Ticket vending Machine (CoTVM)

In an endeavour to use cash & coins for ticketing by passenger themselves, the concept of Currency
operated ticket vending machine (CoTVM) was evolved and made operational at Mumbai in Sep 2012. As a
pilot, one machine is functional in Mumbai, one in Chennai and one in Secunderabad. The CoTVM is an
unmanned kiosk which is operated by passengers themselves. It has the feature of issuing Journey tickets &
Platform tickets and renewing Season tickets. It can also be used to recharge Smart cards used in ATVMs.
Payment is in the form coins, bank notes and smart cards. The machine is capable of accepting specific coins
of Re.1, Rs.5 and Rs.10 and bank notes of Rs. 5, Rs.10, Rs.20, Rs.50, Rs.100, Rs.500 and Rs.1000 of
Gandhi series. The machine does not accept currency notes with Ashoka Chakra Emblem.

Technology

The application has been developed with a two layered architecture in C++. The database requirements are
met through a Sybase product, ASE-CE. A Java version of the application is used in the ATVMs to provide
additional features in the user interface.

Currently, the hardware is deployed across 06 data centres, including one data centre for Disaster Recovery.
To cater to the expansion of the user base for this application, the setup was revamped recently and
migrated to a high-end Virtualized setup. This is the first time that Virtualization has been implemented for
an application of Indian Railways. The backend setup has a provision to support Business Continuity
ensuring nearly 100% uptime for the application. Besides this, at the client end, the so called ‘Smart Clients’
have been deployed which are basically thin clients with a footprint of Relational Database Management
System (RDBMS) and application image. These ensure continuous business operations in the event of
network / backend outage for 3 days for thin clients and 1 day for ATVMs. The application rides on the
Unified Ticketing Network (UTN) for the Passenger Reservation System and Unreserved Ticketing System.

The printing device is a customized Dot Matrix Printer. However, in case of ATVMs, Thermal Printers are
being used. CRIS works as the coordinating agency for procurement of peripheral equipment for the Zonal
Railways. For details on current procurements, please go to our section on Tender Notices.
The picture here shows a typical ATVM kiosk. The kiosks have a
touch screen based user interface, a smart card reader, a thin
client and a thermal printer.
 FOIS – FREIGHT OPERATIONS INFORMATION
SYSTEM

About FOIS
Indian Railways (IR) carries nearly 1012 Million Tonnes of Freight in a year as reported from
FOIS System in Year 2013-14. Freight trains bring two thirds of the Indian Railway revenues
and are referred to as the bread earners for the Railways. The major commodities carried by
Indian Railways are Coal, Iron Ore, Foodgrains, Iron & Steel, Cement, Petroleum products,
Fertilizer and Containerized Traffic. There are specialized wagons to handle the
Transportation Needs of the different types of commodities. Unlike passenger carrying trains,
Freight trains do not run to a fixed schedule thus making Freight Operations a highly Information
Intensive activity. Based on this information managers makeAllocation Decisions continually
to dynamically Optimize Utilization of resources like wagons, locomotives, crew and paths on
the network. Real time information allows good decision making and thus ensures high levels of
mobility within the system. This realisation has led to the development of Freight Operations
Information System (FOIS).

Features

FOIS - A Strategic Advantage to both IR and its customers. The implementation of the
system is envisaged to eventually achieve the following:-

-Extension of the current business practice of bulk movement in train load formation
to piecemeal traffic to increase the market share by clubbing and moving together
similar type of stock of "Hub & Spoke" arrangement.

-Global tracking of consignments in real time whether in rakes or in individual wagons.

The insight and pipeline of consignments would be seamlessly available for timely
planning and just in time inventory management.

-Facilitate acceptance of customer's orders, billing and cash accountal from

identified nodal customer centres which, may not necessarily be the handling terminals.
These facilities could even get extended to customer's premises and alongwith
introduction of
e- commerce benefit both by reducing the burden of logistics management.

FOIS comprises two major subsystems :

-Rake Management System (RMS) for handling the operational aspects of IR.
-Terminal Management System (TMS) for handling the commercial aspects of IR.

The other important subsystems for better Decision Making:

MIS Reporting, Rake Allotment/Allocation System (RAS), Terminal Pipeline
Management System (TPMS)

FOIS provides improvement in existing business practices and consequently reduction

in the operating costs while enhancing the quality of service. A full fledged Domestic
Terminal Management System (DTMS) for CONCOR is already in place.

Thus FOIS provides:

-Convenience and Transparency to Customers

-Optimum Utilization of Resources
-Handling of Commercial and Operational aspects of Rail and Freight Movement
-Better Decision making tools
-Help for better logistics management.

Services
Reporting/Monitoring enabled for:

-Position of Freight Trains in Computerized Territory, ETA/ETD at a station, Commodity wise flow for
customers like Power Houses, Refineries, Fertilizers, Cement Plants, Steel Depots and public freight
terminals -Attachment/Detachment of Rolling Stock -Wagons in yard, Locos in Shed, Detention -
Loading/Unloading from different regions/locations.
-Freight Earnings, RRs, Invoices, Demurrage charges, Wharfage charges and other Local Charges.
-Balance Sheet, Apportionment, E-payments, Empty Haulage etc.

Managerial Reports generated on:

-Periodic Loading/Unloading, Detentions, Rolling Stock Availability, NTKM/GTKM, WTR, Outage etc.
-Comparative/Tredn analysis on different parameters.
-Interchanges, Forecasting
-Holding, EKM, HOR, Insight etc.

Decision Making tools:

-Rake Allocation/Allotment
-Terminal Congestion Determination etc.

Technology
FOIS has been implemented with state-of-the-art technologies, be it Software Technologies, Hardware
Technologies, Communication Networks or Management of the entire System.

FOIS is integrated with other operations modules of CRIS using an Enterprise Application Integration
software and with banks and customer legacy system through SOA using web services. Oracle grid
including Oracle Weblogic, Oracle Tuxedo and Oracle DB are used for the same.
FOIS system has evolved from a traditional Client/Server (Two tier architecture) to three tier architecture.

-High Availability HP Itanium Servers with Oracle 11g Database

-Oracle Tuxedo (Earlier BEA Tuxedo) System and Weblogic Server
-J2EE platform for implementation of reporting, integrations, SOA etc.
-Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 (EE), Pro *C
-Dedicated OFC cable networks integrated with VSAT to cover-up the widespread
connectivity across the nation.