Junction goes Hitech.

Security and surveillance at Tiruchi Railway Junction has been fortified with the commissioning of the hi-tech Integrated Security Scheme (ISS).

Tiruchi is the sixth major station in the Southern Railway zone to be brought under the scope of the state-of-the-art ISS.

Conceived by the railway after the Mumbai terror attacks in November 2008, the ISS has four key components — Closed Circuit Television Surveillance System with Internet Protocol based cameras, Access Control, Personal Baggage Screening System, and Bomb Detection and Disposal System.

Twenty nine out of the 67 surveillance cameras sanctioned for Tiruchi Railway Junction under the ISS have been commissioned with all of them integrated and connected with the centralised control room established near the station’s VIP entrance. The rest of the cameras under test are expected to be commissioned soon. The 29 cameras, some of which are of “Pan Tilt Zoom” type, have been installed at vantage points to cover the platforms, subway, circulating, and booking areas besides the outer areas to enable Railway Protection Force personnel watch the movements from the five monitors installed in the centralised control room. The advanced CCTV system stores video data for 30 days with a facility to record and playback. The CCTV system would enable security personnel to view nook and corner of the station premises from the control room round-the-clock, say railway officials.

A couple of personal baggage scanners and a parcel scanner are the other advanced gadgets to have gone on stream along with the cameras.

A couple of under vehicle scanners, real time viewing system, a disruptor, a couple of bomb basket, handheld metal detectors, doorframe metal detectors, thermal cutter, blasting machine, and rendering safe procedure kit constitute the long list of security gadgets sanctioned for Tiruchi under the ISS.

The under vehicle scanners that are to be installed a few metres from the station’s entrance would monitor foreign objects kept below the vehicle entering the station. It would provide high-resolution images of objects hidden underneath the vehicle.

The Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad of the RPF has been entrusted with the task of managing the ISS which has been put in place at a cost of over Rs. 3 crore at Tiruchi Junction, say railway officials