All Indian Railways wagons to be tagged with to RFID by Dec ’22

25 July 2020: Indian Railways is on a new mission! The Indian Railways will complete this process of fitting radio-frequency identification tags (RFID) in all the wagons by December 2022. These tags will be used for tracking all wagons. Currently, Indian Railway is maintained such data manually, which leaves scope for errors. Using RFID devices will be easier for the railways to know the exact position of all the wagons, locomotives and coaches.

According to the Ministry of Railways official statement, 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. 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 although the Government has fixed the deadline till December 2022.

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.