New Delhi: A sensor machine used for detecting railway track occupancy by a train, commissioned by the Railways according to specifications approved by its design and standards unit RDSO, has been red flagged by officials as “faulty” after testing, saying the malfunctioning units could lead to a Balasore-like incident unless withdrawn.
Officials said that around 4,000 units of the “faulty” MSDAC system have been procured by the Railways at a cost of Rs 5 lakh per unit and are being tested as part of a trial.
The MSDAC (Multi Section Axle Counter) is a system used in railway signalling to detect the clear or occupied status of a section of track between two points.
The system generally consists of a wheel sensor (one for each end of the section) and an evaluation unit for counting the axles of the train both into and out of the section. It basically tells a station master if the track is clear or occupied for train movement.
The system has been red-flagged by engineers of RDSO a number of times in the last one year with at least four non-conformity reports submitted to the central office after inspection of the system.
So far, 3,000 such potentially faulty units have already been installed in the Eastern Railway, South East Central Railway, South Eastern Railway, Northern Railway, Central Railway, North Western Railway, and North Central Railway as part of the testing phase.
Queries sent to RDSO DG about the MSDAC system supplied by a private agency, did not elicit any response.
According to a report sent by the Chief Signal Engineer of Eastern Railway to the Executive Director, RDSO, the MSDAC system installed at Naihati Station was found to be faulty.
The report said that the machine which is supposed to detect train movement has failed to do so “frequently.” It further said that sometimes the sensor in the machine detects movement and sometimes it does not – terming it “unpredictable.”
The report has also said that the system is so faulty that it sends out signals if it comes in contact with any metal, not necessarily the components of a wheel.
“Sometimes sensors detect trolley movements and sometimes not (unpredictable). It is also seen that sometimes two wheels of a trolley pass but the system detects only one.
“Due to highly sensitive sensors, any metal passed over the sensor, such as hammer of Keyman, crowbar of engineer, mobile phones, etc system goes to disturbed mode and sometimes registered as proper wheel counting which is unsafe. Due to lightning, the system sometimes failed,” the report said.
RDSO engineers in its Eastern Unit have also red flagged the issues in letters to the organisation.
In their letter, the engineers have said that the axle counter of the MSDAC system was getting reset on its own without it being reset by station staff, which they said could result in clearing of a track section even if there is another train on it. This, officials said, could lead to a Balasore-like incident.
“Such malfunctioning will cause misinformation which may mislead the station master to perform a wrong operation leading to a Balasore type of incident which will cause loss of human lives,” engineers wrote in their complaint.
