Indian Railways Big Signalling Upgrade Plans: Better Safety, Capacity on 37k KM by 2026

For the first time, Indian Railways has provided clarity on plans for much-needed signalling and telecom upgrades on its network. These improvements are set to significantly improve safety and add capacity to the network over the next four years.

With an expected investment of almost 57,000 crores, Indian Railways is moving forward to deploy modern signalling and telecom systems on its oversaturated and high traffic routes, according to Sanjeev Mittal, now Member – Infrastructure in the Railway Board.

Key Signalling and Telecom Upgrades on Indian Railways by 2026

Project	Target	Target Date of Completion	Current Status
Train Collision Avoidance System	37,300 Route km	2025	Deployed on 950 Rkm, WIP on 1,200 Rkm
Automatic Block Signalling	15,554 Route km	Not Provided	Already deployed on 3,447 km
Electronic Interlocking	1551 Stations	2024	Already deployed on 2221 Stations
4G/LTE Based Wireless Communications	Entire Network	2026	GSM-R and other technology currently in use for MTRC
Centralized Traffic Control	11,021 Route km		Work in Progress

The total planned investment in the entire Signalling & Telecommunications upgrade plan is approximately Rs 56,955 crores over five years.

Signalling Upgrades

Train Collision Avoidance System – 37,300 kilometres in 5 years.

TCAS is an automatic train protection system expected to significantly boost safety and prevent accidents due to manual errors by the train crew. The system will also improve safety in low visibility and high-speed conditions. 950 route kilometres of the technology has already been deployed while work is underway on 1,200 more route kilometres. IR wants to deploy TCAS on 37,300 route kilometres within four years.

The organization had originally planned to deploy ETCS L2 on four pilot sections and the two 160 kmph routes of Mumbai-Delhi and Delhi-Howrah. The project fell through because of steep quotes from global vendors. IR then decided to adopt the locally developed and significantly cheaper Train Collision Avoidance System instead. Under development for five years and being tested on South Central Railway, TCAS was believed to be ready for wider deployment across the Indian Railways network.

Automatic Block Signalling – 15,554 kilometres in Mission Mode

While Automatic Block Signalling has been in use on the Indian Railways for decades, its use has been restricted to very high-density traffic routes only. Routes with suburban train traffic such as those in cities like Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Delhi were provided with automatic block signalling to reduce headway and pack in more trains on those routes.

Auto Signalling has been gradually deployed on longer routes. Coupled with TCAS for train protection, the system is expected to improve capacity without high capital expenditure on increasing the number of lines or compromising on safety.

Electronic Interlocking – 1,550 new installations in 3 years

IR has taken a policy decision to further expand the deployment of Electronic Interlocking at 1,550 more stations in the next three years. So far, 2,221 stations have already been upgraded to Electronic Interlocking systems. The new solid-state systems will significantly improve the reliability and maintainability of signalling in station yards. EI will also make future upgrades, including TCAS and Auto Signalling, easier to deploy at these stations.

Besides, IR also plans to focus on eliminating level crossings or provide interlocking of all remaining gates to ensure higher safety standards. So far, 11,705 level crossings have been interlocked with signalling on their routes.

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Telecommunications Upgrades

Indian Railways will switch to 4G/Long Term Evolution (LTE) based mobile technology as its wireless communications backbone for signalling, train-to-ground and ancillary communication needs.

The Union Government recently allocated 5 MHz of paired spectrum in the coveted but expensive 700 MHz band for the IR’s use.

A switch to LTE based wireless communications will enable Indian Railways to set up a high-availability telecommunications network for trackside and station signalling equipment to communicate with each other and passing trains. The mobile architecture will also enable high spectrum re-use and speedy set up of communications in a variety of configurations.

Planned Uses of the new LTE based network

1. LTE based train protection with the deployment of TCAS
2. Mobile Train Radio Communication between trains crews, stations and traffic controllers
3. Internet of Things based Remote Asset Monitoring for Rolling Stock
4. Data for Passenger Information Systems in trains and on stations
5. Video surveillance with CCTVs in rolling stock and on stations

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Similarly, IR is also expanding coverage of WiFi facility at another 101 stations, CCTVs at 801 stations in addition to improving coverage of its network with optical fibre cables.