Indian Railways To RFID Tag All Wagons By December 2022

On Friday, the Ministry of Railways in a statement said that the Indian Railways is on a mission to RFID Tag all wagons by December 2022.

The Railway Department has been fitting radio-frequency identification tags (RFID) in its wagons to track them.

"So far 23000 wagons have been covered under RFID project. The Project is still in progress and continuing, although this work has been slowed for some time due to pandemic Covid 19. Government has fixed the deadline for fitting of RFID in all the wagons of Indian Railway till December 2022," the statement said.

Currently, Indian Railway maintains data on wagons manually, leaving scope for errors.

"Using RFID devices will be easier for the railways to know the exact position of all the wagons, locomotives and coaches," the ministry said.

While the RFID tag will be fitted in the rolling stock, trackside readers will be installed at stations and key points along the tracks to read the tag from a distance of about two meters and transmit the wagon identity over a network to a central computer. In this way, each moving wagon can be identified and its movement tracked.

With the introduction of RFID, the issue of shortage of wagons, locomotives and coaches is expected to be addressed in a more transparent and expeditious manner.