Western Railway installs its first Mobile Train Radio Communication

On Monday, March 1, Western Railway General Manager Alok Kansal inaugurated the newly commissioned Mobile Train Radio Communication (MTRC) system at Divisional Railway Manager's Office in Mumbai.

This newly commissioned MTRC will enable passengers’ convenience and in case of emergency prompt communication through its advanced technology.

MRTC acts in a similar way as Air traffic control (ARC) does for aircraft. The system will monitor, track and aid in communication between the trains and the control room thereby ensuring smooth movement of rakes as well as help in preventing adverse events, said Kansal after the inauguration.

This is the first time that MTRC is commissioned in Indian Railways. It is a historic move of the Indian Railways. The new system has already been installed in 90 out of 100 rakes running between Churchgate and Virar.

The 60-kilometre suburban section between Churchgate-Virar is a high-density-traffic route where trains run with headway (at an interval) of approximate 3 minutes in peak hours. The section transports over 3.4 million passengers every day by operating over 1300 services.

The newly commissioned system is an integrated system with the ongoing Train Management System so that controllers can communicate with Driver and Guard by using the train number as well as cab number code. In case of emergency, MTRC has a provision for the broadcast call too. The section controller can initiate a Broadcast call to all Motormen/Guards of trains and the same announcement can be extended for passengers of the train.

Benefits of the MTRC System are as follows:

Single touch dialling to call any of the Two Section Train Controllers, Dy. Train Controller, EMU Controller

Auto Call Answer for Cab Radios for Motorman and Guards to receive only audio (Only from Controllers and call from another cab of the same rake)

Contact numbers of three controllers (TPC, SIG and TMS) are fed into the phonebook for easy access while dialling

Motorman can directly communicate the defect of EMU-to-EMU Controller which reduces detention of other trains

Harish Gupta, Principal Chief Signal & Telecom Engineer, Shailendra Kumar, Principal Chief Operations Manager, Naresh Lalwani, Principal Chief Safety Officer, G. V. L. Satyakumar, Divisional Railway Manager/ BCT, S. Bandopadhyay, Chief Communication Engineer, Kuldeep Kumar Jain, Chief Electrical Engineer / RS, Sumit Thakur, Chief Public Relations Officer and Sachin Sharma,  Secretary to GM were also present during the event.