Thousands of rail passengers from Arakkonam and Tiruttani were stranded on Monday, as the railway authorities suddenly short-terminated the EMU services at Thiruvalankadu between 11am and 5pm. Passengers, who reached Thiruvalankadu, were forced to take share autos paying exorbitant fares to reach Arakkonam, Mosur and Tiruttani.

The Southern Railway is to cancel 130 EMU services between Chennai and Arakkonam on Wednesday and Thursday as the Arakkonam yard upgrading is yet to be completed. The yard upgrading works, which began on April 20, involve straightening of platform 1 and 2 to accommodate 26 coaches, and extending the length of platform 10 and 11 to accommodate 24 coaches. In addition to this, the Southern Railway was  also laying an additional platform (1A).

Official sources said that platform extension work and signalling work had been completed. However, work on platforms 3, 4, 5, 10, 11 and 1A have witnessed unforeseen delay owing to non-completion of electrical and civil works. “For smooth operation of express trains, via platform 1 and 2 all  EMU train services had to be cancelled,” a senior official told Express.

The sudden cancellation of trains came as a rude shock to passengers who have been facing hardship for the last five days. Office-goers from Arakkonam were the worst affected.K Baskar, Member, Divisional Rail Users Consultative Committee (DRUCC), Chennai, blamed the railways for poor planning and mismanagement of trains. “Had the railways announced one-minute stop for all express trains at Thiruvallur, Arakkonam passengers could have got down at Thiruvallur and reached Arakkonam comfortably,” he said.

According to the official statement, on May 8 and 9, 130 EMU train services will be cancelled between Arakkonam and Chennai. “All fast locals will be operated in slow lines. To cater to the passengers, 18 EMU special trains will be operated between Chennai and Tiruttani,” said the statement. The Chennai Central-Jolarpettai Yelagiri Express, Chennai-Tirupati Garudathiri Express and Tirupati-Chennai Central Garudathiri Express will be cancelled on May 8 and 9.

The Jolarpettai-Chennai Central Yelagiri Express will be cancelled on Wednesday. Similarly, Chennai Central-Arakkonam-Chennai Central MEMU passenger, Arakkonam-Chengalpattu-Arakkonam passenger, Arakkonam-Katpadi-Arakkonam passenger trains, Arakkonam-Vellore-Arakkonam passenger train and Arakkonam-Cuddapah-Arakkonam passenger train will be conacelled on both Wednesday and Thursday.

On Monday, senior officials from the Centre for Information Railway System (CRIS), Delhi, arrived in the city to interrogate Salman Khan, believed to be the mastermind behind one of the biggest railway ticket rackets to emerge recently. Railway officials had arrested Khan on May 2 and seized over 6,000 e-tickets (PNR numbers) valued at roughly Rs 1.5 crore from him. Khan allegedly operated a network of 5,400 agents across the country, and charged Rs 700 per month from each to use his booking software.

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) and Central Railway (CR) officers were also present during the questioning. After the interrogation, the CRIS and IRCTC technical heads (who were also part of the proceedings) submitted a joint report to the railway board, which also included suggestions from the accused on how to end the racket.

According to the joint report, prepared by Sunil Kumar, Group General Manager (IT), IRCTC, and Vinod Bhatia, General Manager, PRS, CRIS, all 6,449 IDs which were used to generate the 6,603 seized PNRs have been deactivated. Apart from that, 1,510 similar other user IDs were also deactivated.

To enhance the security of ticketing systems, the report suggests that passengers’ user IDs be linked to their Aadhaars, and the railways may adopt the suggestion, sources said. The report also suggests that a question or OTP could be introduced after the ‘Book Now’ button is pressed (to break the sequence of automation and make the process more secure).

The report also said raids should be conducted on the agents to whom the accused sold his software. During interrogation, Khan had suggested restricting the IP address. As of now, there is no any restriction on the IP address to book tickets, said an official who was the part of the interrogation. Khan also said such restrictions (only one or two tickets will be generated at time with one IP address) could stem ticketing malpractices. Sources said the railway had started working on his suggestion.

The Railways has doffed its cap to its women force, devoting the latest issue of its monthly magazine to female employees and their achievements after dedicating the year to the safety of women.

The cover of the ‘Indian Railways’ – in purple and pink — celebrates their feats in sports, as managers of railway stations, as checkers and security personnel.

“The May issue has a special focus on women and as we have dedicated this year to women’s safety in the Railways, we are taking special measures in improving the safety, security and amenities for women,” said an official.

The decisions were taken by a committee, consisting of Railway Board chairperson Ashwani Lohani, Member (Traffic) Mohammed Jamshed and other senior officials, which was set up to monitor measures taken for the safety and security of women travelling on trains.

Railway zones also have been asked to issue a calendar of events for the year on issues related to the security of women and children.

The magazine, which costs Rs 10, turns the spotlight on women ticket checkers, testimonials from them on working with the national transporter and carries a ready reckoner on the special privileges that women passengers are provided with by the Railways.

It also highlights a series of record-making achievements — the first woman to operate a train, to become a station manager, announcer, mechanic and so on.

Earlier, the committee had also decided that coaches reserved for women would be placed at the centre instead of the rear end of both long distance and suburban trains and would be painted in a different colour to make them easily identifiable.

The coaches will also have CCTV cameras as an additional security measure and talks are on about covering windows with wire meshes.

It has also been decided that the coaches will have a mixed crew – with women on the squads of ticket checkers and RPF personnel, sources said.

The committee has also suggested that in the next three years, the number of stations run by women be increased from the present three to 100. General Managers have been instructed to earmark 10 stations from every zone for this purpose, the sources said.

The committee has also decided to build infrastructure facilities specifically for women.

NEW DELHI: The Indian Railways has always endeavoured to provide a smooth and comfortable travel experience to its passengers. In a move to increase the safety of train operations and reduce the chances of the signal failing, the Indian Railways had tried to implement Artificial Intelligence (AI) in November 2017.

On a related note, the IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation) has also been taking steps to improve its catering services, including bringing down the prices of various food items.

However, the complaints have not ceased, and in a bid to salvage its reputation, which has taken a serious hit, the Railways is looking to implement AI-based technology to improve its catering service. In order to serve hygienic food with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to railway passengers, the catering services of Piyush Goyal-led Indian Railways are all set to undergo a major ‘technological’ revolution.

Interestingly, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), which is the catering arm of the national transporter, will use AI vision detection, according to a Pioneer report. High definition cameras, connected to huge monitors, have been installed at all the 16 base kitchens at the IRCTC headquarters across the National Capital, the report said. With this system, any rodent, bug or cockroach in any of the base kitchens can be tracked and with the help of AI, the matter will reach various stakeholders right till the IRCTC Managing Director in real time.

The systems use cameras, Near Infra-Red (NIR) spectroscopy, x-rays, and lasers to measure and quickly analyze every aspect of the vegetable as it moves along. While older automatic sorting systems were just focused on sorting the bad from the good, artificial intelligence and machine learning creates the capability to sort foods for their optimized use. For example, potatoes can be sorted based on which ones will produce the least waste when cut into french fries and which ones would work best for potato chips.

Improved Food Safety Compliance

Cameras in the kitchen or food facility watch to make sure that individuals are wearing masks or hair protection when required by safety regulations. Violations can be caught and corrected in near real time.

IRCTC will use AI object recognition for numerous applications, services and menus.

Improved Cleaning

IRCTC claim that the technology could in theory save food processing and reduce the amount of time it takes to clean equipment which saves money on water, energy, and time too. According to the officials, cleaning accounts for 30 percent of energy and water use at food manufacturing facilities. IRCTC believes it could reduce cleaning times by up to 50 percent, enabling less downtime and more productivity.

With traditional non-sensor enabled equipment it is difficult or impossible when every small part of drink processing and storage equipment has been cleaned. The current method of cleaning equipment often has no sensors or ability to see inside the equipment. As a result, IRCTC have designed the cleaning procedure to run as long as would be necessary to deal with these worst possible scenario. Without being able to see inside the equipment that is the only way to assure it has been completely cleaned. That can require a lot of unnecessary cleaning, which wastes water and cleaning chemicals.

IRCTC is also testing their Self-Optimising Clean-in Place system. It uses ultrasonic sensing and optical fluorescence imaging technologies to feed information to an AI program to monitor the amount of food and microbial debris in the equipment. The AI will self-optimise the process to only run the cleaning system only as long as necessary.

Food processing is relatively unique in being one sector where IRCTC can offer an effectively endless variety of options given all the flavors, spices, and ingredients that exist. Recipes can be tweaked in an unimaginable number of ways. Figuring out exactly what customers want is an enormous challenge, and IRCTC is turning to AI to help with that process. This is just one way the sector is using AI. Artificial intelligence is now informing one of the world’s largest food companies which new products they should create. AI is not just being used to find out what flavor combinations people are making on their own but also to help people choose new flavor combinations.

The government is going to start the construction work of the Padma rail link project in a month and 23 kilometres of the 215 km railway tracks — from Dhaka to Jessore — would be elevated.

Once the project is over, it will take just four hours to go to Khulna from the capital, Bangladesh Railway Minister Mujibul Haque said at a press conference yesterday.

The implementation of the project, expected in four years, would lead to the economic development of the country and the GDP would increase by 1 percent, he said.

Amjad Hossain, Director General of Bangladesh Railways (BR), said the travel time between Dhaka and Kolkata would also come down significantly.

“The distance between Benapole [in Jessore] and Kolkata is around 70 kilometres. Once the project is implemented, it would not take more than three to four hours to reach Kolkata from Dhaka.”

The project would bring four districts — Munshiganj, Shariatpur, Madaripur and Narail — under the coverage of railway network, says a press release from the BR.

Currently, it takes more than nine hours to make the distance of about 412 kilometres from Dhaka to Khulna. The minister said once the project is over, the distance would be reduced to 213 kilometres.

The railways ministry organised the press conference at the Rail Bhaban after the Economic Relations Division (ERD) signed a $2.67 billion loan agreement for the project with China Exim Bank at Beijing on April 27. China Railway Group Limited is the contractor firm.

Amjad said the project would be the biggest and “most complex” projects of BR.

The 23km elevated tracks would begin in Gandaria and go over the Buriganga, Dhaleswari-1 and Dhaleswari-2 rivers. There would be an elevated railway station in Keraniganj on the outskirts of the capital.

As many as 66 long bridges and 244 small bridges would also be built. The length of the bridges would be seven to eight kilometres.

The railways minister said the tracks from Mawa in Munshiganj to Bhanga in Faridpur would be ready for use the day vehicles would be plying the Padma Bridge. He did not give any specific deadline.

Padma Bridge Project is scheduled to end by December but project officials say vehicles would not be able to use the bridge before the second half of next year.

DG Amjad said the rail link project would establish direct communication between Dhaka and Mongla Port. On the other hand, the government has a plan to introduce a trans-national rail line from Dhaka to Kolkata through Jessore, Benapole and India’s Petrapole in future.