Railway launches SIMRAN for passengers

New Delhi, Nov 23: In a move aimed at substantially upgrading passenger amenities, the Railways has sanctioned a pilot project -- Satellite Imaging for Rail Navigation (SIMRAN) -- for providing real time train running information to the passengers.

A ministry official said the project was being developed by utilising the Global Positioning System (GPS).

It was being developed jointly by the Research Designs and Standard Organisation (RDSO), Lucknow and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur.

The official said the pilot project was sanctioned for development of hardware and software for providing real time Passenger Information System.

Under the pilot project, all Rajdhani Express and Shatabdi Express trains originating from New Delhi and Electric Multiple Units (EMUs) running between Lucknow and Kanpur have been selected for the field trial.

As on November 16, 26 rakes of Rajdhani Express, six and seven rakes of Shatabdi and EMUs respectively have been equipped with SIMRAN train equipment. These trains were being monitored through Internet and SMS services, he said.

The major objective of SIMRAN project was to develop technology for continuously tracking of every train for its location, speed and direction of movement, the official said.

It would also help to develop techniques to disseminate information on real time basis about train running to the passengers and the general public through display boards at stations, Interactive Voice Response Systems (IVRS), Short Message Service (SMS) and the Internet.

UNI