Prakash Tendulkar, February 2008

Control Tower at Churchgate (CCG) was wired for Route Relay Interlocking in late 50s by Siemens. This system used wire wound duo relays that had a response time of few milliseconds. Although reliable, they required lot of maintenance and adjustments.

  Duo Relay © IBM Corporation

Today, CCG Control Tower is housed in newer building, has better ventilation and cooling for electronics and has lot more punch after synchronizing with TMS (Train Management System).

  Operator's panel at CCG.

  Operator's Display. Not the best quality picture, though. Red dotted path shows occupied track.

  This screen is separate from normal display but shows path set for train with red showing what has been either occupied or just passed with green showing the rest of the path that has been cleared. This is driven by TMS.

  This screen shows details of various trains that have occupied or will occupy platforms at CCG.

  Another screen shows different information at the same time.

  This Red button is pressed to use Calling-On signal and then pink (or red) cap is placed over the button.

  Extra caps.

When I compared old Control Tower technology with new one, one thing caught my attention.

In old as well as new technology, operator had / has  to press only two buttons to move train between Churchgate (CCG) and Marine lines (MEL). One indicating the platform at MEL and the second for platform at CCG. If the track is clear, it will get set automatically all the way through.

The difference here is, if part of track is not clear, old technology would still accept the command showing unavailable track with blinking red dots.

New technology will set only available path and stop. Operator then, has to set remaining track ny pressing button at the beginning of unavailable track to platform at either MEL or CCG.

Next picture really does not belong to RRI topic but this person is related to suburban traffic on WR.

  This is Dr. P.C. Sehgal, MD for MRVC. He is EE by training and has served as Sr. DEE at BCT in early 90s. He has participated in several analytical studies involving suburban traffic in Mumbai and has made several important suggestions.

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