Steps taken by the Railways to improve safety of railway track are as under:
(i) Track renewal works are undertaken as and when stretch of track becomes due for renewal on the basis of criteria laid down in Indian Railway Permanent Way Manual on age/condition basis.
(ii) Primary track renewals are now sanctioned with Pre-stressed Concrete (PSC) Sleepers, 60kg, 90 kg/sq mm UTS (Ultimate Tensile Strength) rails, fan-shaped layout on PSC sleepers, Steel Channel Sleepers on girder bridges, etc.
(iii) Indian Railways have a system of scheduled inspections by Railway officials which, inter alia, includes daily inspection by Keyman, inspections at stipulated periodicity by various designated officials to monitor condition of track and periodic measurement/monitoring of track parameters by Track Recording Cars (TRCs) and Oscillation Monitoring Systems (OMS) for safe running of traffic.
(iv) Mechanized track maintenance is being carried out by deployment of state of the art track maintenance machines. Advance monitoring equipments viz Automated integrated track geometry cum video inspection system with features like rail wear measurement, axle box level acceleration measurement, condition monitoring of track component, clearance measurement to identify any infringement, etc besides track geometry measurement are also planned to be inducted. To ensure availability of traffic blocks for track maintenance work, a Joint Procedure Order (JPO) has been issued for advance planning of maintenance block by Zonal Railways.
This information was given by the Minister of State for Railways Shri Rajen Gohain in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.
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