In an update, the suburban local trains of Mumbai will soon have closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras that will allow the guards and motorman to monitor what’s happening in the train in real-time.
The new set of Central (CR) and Western Railway (WR) trains will feature CCTV in March 2020. The first trains to have it will be the air-conditioned (AC) local trains for CR.
Reported by Hindustan Times, the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai acting on the direction of the Railway ministry, will manufacture trains that connect CCTV surveillance to screens in the cabins of the motorman and guard. ICF manufactures suburban local trains and AC local trains.
“The plan of integrating CCTV cameras to a screen inside the motorman and guard cabins was asked to be done by the Railway ministry. It is being done to increase security inside train compartments. All new suburban local trains including AC trains will be equipped with live monitoring,” said a senior ICF official.
The ICF has already installed similar screens in the guards’ cabin of the AC local train prototype that has electrics on the underslung. The Union railway minister Piyush Goyal was first to suggest live monitoring in local trains after 23 people die in the stampede at Elphinstone Road station (now Prabhadevi).