Marching forward towards technology upgradation, Petrapole station of the Sealdah division saw the replacement of the British-era token block instrument with the electronic interlocking system today.

Petrapole is the last station of Indian Railways, near the Bangladesh border in Sealdah division and connects to Benapole, first station of Bangladesh for transportation of goods trains and the international passenger train Bandhan Express between the two countries. Petrapole station is also one of the freight trains interchanging point between India and Bangladesh.

Advertisement

The station, however, had no signalling system and used to receive trains from Bangaon by using an age-old token block instrument which was the last one existing in the Eastern Railway. At around 4.15am today, a new Siemens make electronic interlocking system was commissioned at Petrapole station under the supervision of the divisional railway manager Deepak Nigam. For commissioning of a new signalling system, more than 50 persons were deployed in the night time to prevent any disruption in train movements at Bangaon.

In this section, non-interlocking work was completed within a short period of eight hours only by the signal and telecommunication railway team that was led by Mr Md Nasir, Sr DSTE/Sealdah. With the new signalling system, the old token block instrument from the British era was replaced with a new universal failsafe block instrument system that would enable enhanced safety in this section and increase the scope of movement of more trains.

According to the Eastern Railway, the old token block instrument would be kept in the Rail Museum as heritage.