Indian railways is using ISRO satellites to allow live tracking for its trains

To add live tracking to the system, the Indian Railways has linked its trains via ISRO satellites. The satellites will not only track trains amidst the journeys but will also update the control charts about the arrival and departure of the trains, officials said.

“A new beginning has been made in the new year: the train movement information is acquired and fed to the control charts using ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) satellite-based real-time train information system (RTIS) automatically,” a senior railway ministry official told the news channels.

The official informed that the Railways had implemented the system on 8 January on some of its mail or express trains. These trains will run on the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Katra-Bandra Terminus, New Delhi-Patna, New Delhi-Amritsar, and Delhi-Jammu routes, the official added.

While interacting with one of the leading news channels, the official shared that the new satellite system will help the Indian Railways to modernize its control room and railway network.  Overall, the system will bring a significant change in the efficiency of train movements across its network and will also improve the accuracy of train-running information.

During the interaction, the official briefly explained the working of the new system and said that the RTIS device installed in the train would detect the position and speed of the train via GAGAN geo-positioning system.

“Based on this information and application logic, the device sends the train movement updates (arrival/departure/run through/unscheduled stoppages and mid-section updates) to a central location server in the CRIS data center using S-band Mobile Satellite Service (MSS) of ISRO,” the official briefed.

After processing in the CLS, the said information will be transmitted to the system of Control Office Application (COA) for updating the control charts without any manual intervention in the divisions, the official said during the interview.

The official also shared that Indian Railways was earlier updating the train running status manually.