NEW DELHI: The punctuality of trains has leapfrogged from less than 75% in the past few years to 96-97% in recent months, though more freight trains are running this year. Almost 65% of mail express trains have resumed their services after these were disrupted during the pandemic. Railway officials said even during the few days of heavy fog, the punctuality of trains this year was 90% as compared to around 60% in previous years.
Officials said the improvement in punctuality on heavy foggy days has been possible as the national transporter has almost doubled the installation of “fog pass devices” on trains in the past two years. Out of the total 12,742 such on-board devices, nearly 3,000 have been deployed in trains running across the Northern Railways considering that the impact of fog is more in this part of the country. A total of 1,716 and 1,289 fog pass devices have been deployed in East Central Railway and North Central Railway respectively.
Fog pass device is a GPS-based hand-held portable device which serves as an aid for the crew during foggy weather through audio visual alarm, whenever any landmark comes within the geo-fence range.
