Date:12/05/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/05/12/stories/2008051259430400.htm

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Bringing orderliness to a maze of tracks

Special Correspondent

Route Relay Interlocking officials man 1,400 train movements every day

-Photo: Mohd. Yousuf

Finely tuned: A train passing through a track point interchange after getting clearance from the station master at Secunderabad Station.

HYDERABAD: The locomotive hurtles down the track at great speed.

The villain and the hero are engaged in a do or die battle. The interchanging track slides and the villain’s leg gets trapped in it. As the hero jumps away the train mows down the bad guy. Those watching these scenes in a movie might be enthralled, but there would certainly be some among the audience who would smirk at such scenes.

Safety mechanism

“Such things will never happen. Even if a stone of five mm diameter gets trapped in the track point, our control room gets an alert and there is no way a green signal is given for the train to pass. Such is the safety mechanism,” railway officers manning the Route Relay Interlocking (RRI) control room at Secunderabad railway station explain.

Situated away from the humdrum of the Secunderabad Station, which attracts more than a lakh passengers and handles 1,400 train movements every day, the RRI officials are a picture of concentration, bringing some orderliness over the maze of railway tracks.

Wireless sets crackle non stop and the dedicated telephone buzz continuously. The huge control board with Red and Yellow LED lights indicate the trains coming in and going out of the station. The RRI control keeps directing the movement of every train onto the correct line using the track changers. A sophisticated track circuit indicates the movement of the trains automatically and commands are given appropriately diverting them onto the correct lines.

Mammoth task

With nearly 200 passengers trains including the MMTS services passing through the station every day, routing them on to the ten lines in the station is a mammoth task. “It’s like a sprinter running a marathon with no end”, a senior railway official Nadurin Srinivas would say. These trains criss-cross on the ten lines at the station as the RRI control officials keep a close watch. For them, a simple mistake would mean a catastrophe. “But we will not allow that to happen. Our safety record is certainly something to boast about,” Sharad V. Ingale, DRM of South Central Railway says modestly.