LUCKNOW, Mar 27: Research Designs and Standards Organisation (RDSO) is a symbol of Indian Railways and this Organisation is working tirelessly for changes to bring betterment in railways and the hard work of the entire team of Indian Railways in Kashmir is reflected from the fact that a man living in Kerala today can have a Kashmiri apple at his home in the same season.
This was stated by Prabhas Dansana, Director General (DG) RDSO at Lucknow Laboratories of the Organisation during an interaction with a battery of journalists from Jammu who were on a visit to the research institute.When asked about the research outcome on taking the train services to the twin border districts of Rajouri and Poonch in J&K, the DG said that the authorities concerned are continuously planning to take the train to the entire border belt of the country.
He informed that after the success of Vande Bharat (VB) train services in Kashmir and other regions of the country, efforts are on to start Semi-High Speed trains and expressed optimism that the same will be started soon.Replying to a question from this reporter regarding how much more time will India take to stand at par with nations like Japan which are pioneering in rail technology, Dansana said that for certain factor India is already ahead of the most advanced nations of the world as Indian Railways daily carry passengers more in number than the total population of most of the advanced countries.
He further said that many countries like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Mozambique etc seek help from India through Rail India Technical and Economic Service (RITES) for testing their rail infrastructure and also for many other things related to the railways.Many other senior officers of RDSO also told reporters about various aspects and working of their Organisation.They informed that the train project to Kashmir was full of challenges like that of tough terrain and climatic conditions apart from socio-economic factors of the area.“At certain places, before starting work on some bridges over the river Chenab, we had to first lay a long stretch of the road,” one of the senior officers of RDSO stated adding that as Himalayas are the new mountains, movement of tectonic plates was also to be kept in mind while accomplishing the project of Kashmir railways.
Other senior officers of the RDSO said that planning is underway for putting systems like Traffic Parcels in place to transport perishable fruits from Kashmir and after studying various factors, proposal has already been submitted to the concerned authorities for certain things like Mandis for perishable fruits at suitable places in Kashmir.
The top railway engineers also talked about the indigenously developed system Kavach which is now being used by the Indian Railways to prevent collisions and other mishaps.They said that in the entire world there are eight laboratories which are presently engaged in research and development works on trains and RDSO is one such lab.
