Vikas Purwar


Introduction

Indian Railways is the fourth largest railway system in the world. It has 128305 kilometres of track laid across the country with more than 68000 route kilometres. It runs more than 20,000 trains every day carrying over 23 million passengers and transporting over 1512 million tonnes of freight. In respect of its importance to the people of India, Indian Railways is truly the national transporter of India.

To facilitate this movement serving not only India but also the neighbours Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan, Indian Railways runs about 350,000 freight wagons, 80,000 passenger coaches, and 13200 locomotives.

Background

All these rolling stock and locomotives need to be maintained in fine fettle for safe and reliable operations. The basic requirement for this maintenance is the identification of the rolling stock. The rolling stock in Indian Railways is traditionally identified using a rolling stock type code and a serial number, sometimes along with the Zonal Railway to which the rolling stock is allocated which together form a unique identity of the rolling stock. At every maintenance and operation point, this identity is read by a human being. This process is inherently slow. It also requires a large number of personnel to be involved in just reading off numbers painted on the body of the rolling stock. The process is inaccurate too. Wagon numbers, for example, are in 11 digits. It is easy for the human eye to miss or wrongly read a digit or more in the wagon number. Many-a-times, the numbers fade out and become illegible. There is also the possibility of the numbers being painted incorrectly by mistake during maintenance schedules. There exists the additional difficulty of reading the numbers in the dark during the night time. Additionally, reading numbers on a fast-moving rolling stock presents its challenges. This is especially true of the new coaches like those of the Vande Bharat Express and the Gatiman Express that have begun running at 160 mph on the Hazrat Nizamuddin- Agra Cantt section.

Operation and maintenance systems are being progressively computerized in IR. Today, almost the complete operation and maintenance records are maintained on computer systems largely created by CRIS. Manual reading of rolling stock identification means that these identification details need to be fed into computers every time. Over and above the general tediousness and wastefulness of the method, there are all the chances of incorrect data entry. Wrong data affects downstream decision-making.

To overcome all these difficulties, Indian Railways decided to go ahead with a machine-readable identification system that could identify rolling stock on the run. IR zeroed in on the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to serve the purpose.

RFID technology

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is the wireless use of electromagnetic fields to transfer data, to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. The tags contain electronically stored information. Unlike a barcode, the tag does not necessarily need to be within the line of sight of the reader and may be embedded in the tracked object. RFID is one method for Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC).

Historical Developments

The operation of Indian Railways freight wagons is managed over a massive database-driven application called the Freight Operations Management System (FOIS). RFID technology was considered for FOIS for automatic reading of wagon numbers in freight yards. US railroads have been using this technology to identify and track their rolling stock since 1993 for recording wagon interchange, wayside diagnostics, and wagon tracking and tracing. In the year 1996, Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) demonstrated the technology in Bangalore on a few freight wagons. At that time, the use of the technology was proposed for the container flats used by the Container Corporation of India (CONCOR).

However, at that time, the major constraint felt was the unavailability of a sturdy data infrastructure connecting the readers in the field to the central servers. Building a dedicated data infrastructure for the purpose would be just too expensive to be practical. However, this was not the end for this technology in Indian Railways.

A few wagons running in closed circuits in East Coast Railway were chosen for the second phase of technology demonstration to prove out pilot trials. In 2008, 500 numbers of BOBRN (hopper) wagons were fitted out with RFID tags. Fixed readers were installed at Visakhapatnam, Talcher, and Paradeep. One handheld reader was made available at Visakhapatnam. The fixed readers were connected to a central server at CRIS through the FOIS network. The pilot trials gave confidence to Indian Railways that the technology could indeed be used over IR. However, the technology used for the trials was proprietary and very expensive and therefore was not adopted at that time for widespread application. There was no further movement on the Project until the next epoch.

RFID as Rolling Stock Identification Enabler for Trackside Fault Detection Systems

Indian Railways had begun looking at installing trackside fault detection devices for its rolling stock. In one of the projects for Online Condition Monitoring of Rolling Stock, acoustic bearing and wheel impact load detectors bundled together were to be installed over IR. These detectors are provided along the trackside and as the train crosses the location, its wheels and bearing are examined automatically for faults. Alerts are generated and passed on to maintainers if a fault is detected. However, one big question was identifying the particular vehicle and the particular wheel that is faulty and relaying this vehicle identification along with the relevant fault details. It, therefore, required that vehicle identity be read automatically by a machine (as part of OMRS) while the train is on the run.

With the awareness of the feasibility of RFID technology for tracking and tracing of wagons, the provision of reading the vehicle identity using RFID was included in the OMRS Project. The OMRS system was to be capable of reading the tags provided on the rolling stock by Indian Railways. With this requirement, the next epoch of RFID in IR began. IR and its computerisation wing CRIS set upon themselves to design and implement a vendor-agnostic completely open-source RFID system for Automatic Rolling Stock Track and Trace. The concept was kept simple and it is as follows:

  • An RFID tag would be fitted to each side of the rolling stock. Among other details the tag would store the unique identity of the rolling stock and whether the tag is fitted on the left side or the right side.
  • The tag would be encoded within IR
  • There would be fixed readers installed on the trackside, with one antenna on either side of the track to read both the tags of a vehicle.
  • The vehicle identity information would be read as the train crossed the reader site
  • This information would be stored and passed on by the RFID reader to the Freight Maintenance Management module of CRIS.
  • This identity information along with the time stamp would be served to whichever authorized agency needed it.
  • If RFID readers were to be integrated with another system that needed to read the vehicle’s identity, it would be able to do so easily using the data protocols and standards published by Indian Railways/ CRIS, simply because the system was designed to be open and non-proprietary.

Indian Railways chose to work on the GS1 standards. A late foray into the RFID technology space was used as an advantage to leapfrog over the legacy systems used by worldwide railways. Accordingly, a new tag was designed. Data protocols were written to suit Indian Railway conditions. One important idea was not to disturb the working systems of Indian railways but to develop protocols that would be flexible enough to cater to the quirks of the manual identification system being followed historically.

The RFID tag

The RFID tag for affixing on rolling stock consists of the tag inlay encased in a suitable polymer casing. These tags are metal mount tags. GS1’s EPC Gen2 V2 tags were selected after a detailed study of the options available. These tags are passive Ultra High Frequency (UHF) tags and provide improved security features by authenticating the tags. The tags can identify themselves to the interrogating reader. Memory is partitioned into multiple files and it allows for two separate kinds of data to be stored on the tag in EPC Area and User Memory Areas. These tags can be written locked with a password that can be used to unlock the tag and edit it. The tags also feature a kill password using which they can be permanently silenced. This last feature is useful when a particular rolling stock has been decommissioned and is being cut up for scrap.

The tags are encased in a fit-and-forget casing. It is made up of a polymer material that can withstand the harsh environmental conditions that a railway rolling stock encounters over its lifetime. A suite of series of tests was designed and tags are subjected to these tests before a manufacturer’s tags are cleared for fitment on IR’s rolling stock.

At the same time, these tags are inexpensive and easy to manufacture. The cost angle is important simply due to the sheer number of tags required to be fitted.

Tag fitment method

Mounting tags on a rolling stock had to be a fit-and-forget procedure. It could not be allowed to become loose on the run with time. The fitment process also had to be simple and easy to cover large numbers of rolling stock in a short time. The method identified was fitting the tag with two break-stem fasteners that were battery-driven. All new coaches and wagons are now tagged at the manufacturers’ premises. Older stock running on IR is being tagged progressively. At present 1,88,000 wagons and 20,000 coaches have already been tagged and the work is progressing at a fast pace.

Key Achievements
1. Trial of RFID Tags at high speed (182.7 kmph)was successfully conducted in Aug ’16 – an unofficial world record.
2. Series fitment of RFID tags on newly manufactured wagons started in July’17.
3. Approx 20,000 coaches and 1,88,000 wagons have been tagged so far.
4. The widening of the vendor base has resulted in an appreciable price reduction of RFID tags.
5. Series fitment of RFID Tags also started in newly manufactured coaching stock in Coach Production Units from July 19 onwards. CRIS has provided the necessary equipment, backend infra and training to the officials of all the coach Production Units.
6. 60 portable readers have already been distributed to various units of IR and an order for 1125 nos has already been placed for supply to various maintenance units of Indian Railways.
7. There is a proposal to deploy 365 nos of fixed readers over the IR network covering important yards, Routine OverHaul (ROH) Depots, and major workshops.
8. CRIS has developed an in-house Android App(port read) for data writing, the latest version of which “Ganga 15.2” was released in April 2023.

Conclusion

The adoption of RFID technology by Indian Railways marks a significant milestone in revolutionizing rolling stock management. By leveraging GS1 standards and an open-standard approach, the railway aims to streamline operations, improve efficiency, and enhance customer experience. The implementation of RFID enables accurate rolling stock tracking, simplified maintenance processes, and seamless integration with various diagnostic and tracking systems. As Indian Railways continues to deploy RFID technology across its extensive network, the future of rail transportation in India looks promising and technologically advanced.

Views expressed by Vikas Purwar, GM/RFID, Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS)

 

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