East Coast Railway

IT Projects

Info Tech � IT Projects

All About
In line with the corporate mission and objective, East Coast Railway has charted out a path of its own to embrace information technology in a big way. Several IT projects are either under execution or implementation to give major thrust to the efforts on computerization in this zonal railway that encompasses various facets of activities like, passenger reservation, train operation, freight management, coaching management, material & inventory management, crew management, personnel management, financial management etc. An ambitious plan is already under active consideration to adopt e-working for this railway to herald a new chapter in office automation.

Projects under implementation

01. Data (IT) Centre
A turn key project contract that was awarded to CRIS in Sept’05, is under execution to set up a state-of-the-art IT (Data) Centre at Bhubaneswar under the umbrella of Centralized Server Architecture using browser based technology. The Data Centre will be linked to all the three divisions and other dept./units through a 2 Mbps OFC connectivity with adequate fail-back arrangement.

Three SDT (Software Development Team) applications viz. Payroll & Interrelated Modules (PRIME), Advanced Financial Railway Earning & Expenditure System (AFRES )& Material Management Information System (MMIS) are being reengineered and customized in a web-enabled environment using Oracle 10g as back-end and J2E as front-end tools for different modules under test run in the transit Data Centre, at Rail Vihar Bhubaneswar. The CRIS Software Development Team has been working in close co-ordination with the ECoR Task Force for past two years to implement the reengineered applications.

Considering the fact that railways have so far been following the EDP Centre approach for off line collection of data & processing thereof in centrally located mainframe computer, the initiative taken by ECoR is first of its kind to adopt the modern day Data Centre concept, where real time processing of data through various on line applications will soon be the order of the day. Besides enabling this railway to develop an excellent decision support system through sharing of onlinr information at all the important locations across its geographic jurisdiction, the Wide Area Network (WAN) already put in place for the purpose will have adequate redundancy to take care of the future requirement including integration with IR network.

02. Railnet
The project that started in the latter part of ‘90s(1997-’98) is the Indian Railway’s Intranet, has been extended to all the zonal railways in phases. Prior to the reorganization of the new zones, ECoR had the Railnet connectivity through the erstwhile SE Railway Headquarter at Garden Reach, Kolkata. Though presently working in a small scale catering to the requirement of important offices in ECoR HQ and divisions , the high speed connectivity now availed directly from the central hub at New Delhi will soon become pervasive at all locations including field units.

03. Passenger Reservation System

Starting off in 1985, under the direct control & supervision Ministry of Railways (Railway Board), the project has already made significant progress in the computerization of passenger reservation all over the country. Otherwise known as CONCERT – Country wide Network For Computerized Enhanced Reservation and Ticketing, the Project was completed on the entire Indian Railways in April, 1999. Under PRS, tickets can be issued from anywhere in any existing train, class, route and date on about 2000 terminals across the country.Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS) has been the nodal agency since beginning of the project to implement & maintain the system all over Indian Railways. At present, 59 nos. of PRS/SRS are in operation within ECoR jurisdiction. Another 7 (Seven) have been planned to be made functional by the end of financial year 2006-‘07.

04. Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS)

Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) is the complete solution built on a 4 (four) tier structure to provide computerized unreserved tickets to railway passengers from dedicated counter terminals, hand held terminals, smart cards, automatic vending machines etc. Though UTS took off as a pilot project in 2001, the network is getting extended all over the Indian Railway in a phased manner.Currently, there are 20(twenty) UTS locations in East Coast Railway. During 2007-2008, UTS will be made functional in another 25 locations.

05. Freight Operation Information System (FOIS)

It has two modules, namely Rake Management System (RMS) and Terminal Management System (TMS). Rake Management System provides for the operational activities such as running of goods trains, placement and drawing out of rakes in the terminals etc. necessary for movement of rolling stocks involved in the freight services. Terminal Management System deals with the whole gamut of commercial transactions pertaining to sale of freight service to rail users. TMS will finally provide issue of on line Railway Receipts (RRs) to the customers and pave way for electronic transfer for money. At present 16 major terminals are issuing on line RRs to the customers and another 22 locations are in the various stages of readiness. Implementation of FOIS over ECoR will help enable the customers to track their consignments being carried by the railways, thereby facilitating their inventory management.

Terminal Management System (TMS) As on Oct'2007:

Div	Sanctioned Locations	Temporarily withdrawn	Status of the locations
Div	Sanctioned Locations	Temporarily withdrawn	P1	P3	Online
WAT	18	-	-	01	17
KUR	13	01(DNM)	01	03	08
SBP	07	01(KRAR)	0	0	06
Total	38	(-02)	01	04	31

Rake Management System (RMS) As on Oct'2007:

Div	Locations
WAT	05
KUR	06
SBP	01
Total	12

06. Control Office Application (COA)

Unlike the other Control Offices such as the Police Control of the Air Traffic Control, which normally have a passive role of reacting to an abnormal situation, the entire sphere of train operations such as starting a train or locomotive, monitoring the movement and so on is managed from the Divisional Control Office. COA seeks to computerize these activities which will facilitate optimization of the usage of rolling stock and other fixed assets. On ECoR, all three divisions, namely, SBP, WAT and KUR are being provided with the COA in the first phase itself.

07. Integrated Coaching Management System (ICMS)

This system has three modules, namely, Punctuality, Stock and Time Tabling . Stock module provides for monitoring of each coach ranging from running in trains to undertaking its periodic maintenance, leading to augmentation of existing train service. Puncutality module seeks to monitor timely running of coaching trains as per schedule; it will ultimately provide for on line information regarding trains to the passengers. Time Tabling module will assist the decision makers to identify possible areas of improvement like introducing or extending trains, speeding up train services and so on. Integrated Coaching Management system (ICMS) has been installed in 3 divisional controls at Visakhapatnam, Khurda Road, and Sambalpur and 4 coaching depots of ECoR viz. Puri, Bhubaneswar, Visakhapatnam, Sambalpur.

Status of ICMS - Phase-II As on Oct' 2007

Location Mode of Connectivity Supply of Thin clients & Printers Installation Connectivity Established

ECoHQ OFC Supplied Yes Yes

KUR OFC Supplied Yes Yes

BBS OFC Supplied Yes Yes

PUI V-SAT Supplied No Yes (OFC)

SBP OFC Supplied Yes Yes

WAT OFC Supplied Yes Yes

VSKP OFC Supplied Yes Yes

Connectivity through OFC has been given to PUI COIS location on 24.09.07.

08. Crew Management System (CMS)

Driver, Assistant Driver and Guard form the essential running staff of a train and therefore their availability is absolutely crucial, especially since then train services, both goods and coaching, have been going up steadily. To ensure not only their timely availability, as well as all safety parameters linked to their functioning, such as mandatory rest, periodic refresher training and medical tests etc, Crew Management System (CMS) is being implemented at all crew booking points. 11 crew booking lobbies have been identified for this purpose. Though these systems are presently standalone projects, all these are proposed to be integrated in the future.

As on Oct'07, Rly Board has approved 11 locations, and an amount of Rs. 9, 60,628/- has been sanctioned for site preparation. ( Rs.1, 31,728/- for VSKP & Rs.8, 28,900/- for rest 09 locations).

Div. No. of Lobbies

Integrated Separate

WAT 3 1

KUR 3 2

SBP 2 -

Total 8 3

09. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) on Wagons / Rakes:

Three locations in ECoR viz. Paradeep port (PRDP), Talcher (TLHR) and Ore Exchange Complex (OEC), Waltair have been chosen to implement the RFID Pilot Project of IR that is under execution by Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS), New Delhi. Preliminary survey of sites has already been completed for installation of RFID reader at the three locations. Initially, this pilot project will be tried out on BOBRN rakes moving in TLHR, PRDP and OFC circuits, and later on the facility will be extended to other rakes at large. On successful implementation of the RFID project, the wagon movement, holding, turn around besides inventory control of rakes can be monitored on real-time basis, which ultimately will improve the over-all productivity of IR.

10. Material Management System (MMS) - P.Way

This is designed for helping the user in managing stores accountal for P-Way materials. Special emphasis has been given on scrap disposal. The system works at two levels of organizational structure i.e. PWI level and Division level. PWI level incorporates all the activities conducted by the PWIs during their normal course of working. The software when used at second level i.e. divisional level facilitates the user at divisional headquarters to monitor the materials available with the PWIs. Further, the divisional user can generate some extensive reports to monitor the activities of PWIs in the field.

http://www.eastcoastrailway.gov.in