Indian Railways to install one lakh digital display screens at stations

• The railways will install about one lakh digital display screens across more than 2,000 stations to disseminate passenger-related information.
• RailTel, a PSU of railways, has been given the task of developing the Railway Display Network (RDN) under which around 1,00,000 digital display screens will be put up at over 2,000 railway stations.
• The RDN plan will be implemented on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad and Allahabad-Manikpur sections on a trial basis.
• RDN is primarily meant for displaying information related to passenger amenities, comfort, convenience and safety. All display screens, which are to be IP (Internet Protocol)-based, will be individually addressable and controllable in terms of context, content, duration and time slots from a central control location.

Indian Railways launch the new policy to ramp up freight volume

• Aiming at increasing freight volume, Railways today launched a new traffic rationalisation policy which includes multi-point loading facility for covered wagons and increasing distance limit for a mini-rake facility to 600 km.
• The policy aims at increasing freight by about 6 million tonnes as it has allowed multi-point loadings and also increased the distance limit for loading mini rakes to 600 km from current 400 km.
• Earlier loading was permitted for point-to-point service which was favouring big players. But now it would allow multi-loading facility which will benefit small players too.
• The public transporter has been witnessing a continuous erosion of its share in cement dispatch. Railways share has come down from over 40 per cent at the beginning of the financial year 2015-16 to around 37.8 per cent in January 2016.
• The measures like introducing mini rake, multi-point loadings will provide much-needed support to cement sector and at the same time, help Railways in ensuring that its share does not deplete any further.

Railways launch the pilot study on accrual accounting system

• With the aim of initiating reforms in its accounting system, the railways today launched a pilot project on accrual accounting and upgradation costing system.
• The project aims to link outcome with expenditure and benchmarking of costing at the Kapurthala factory.
• Established in 1986, the Kapurthala factory is one of the modern coach manufacturing units of the railways.
• The system of accrual accounting is designed to improve the quality of reporting of the financials of the production unit significantly by ensuring compliance with the tenets of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and Accounting pronouncements made by the Government Accounting Standards Advisory Board.
• The new state-of-the-art costing system will be IT-driven and use modern management accounting tools to identify areas for cost reduction. It will ensure optimal utilisation of scarce resources and also serve as a platform for tracking of expenditure.
• Railways have already embarked on a pilot study on the introduction of accrual accounting in a division, a workshop and the zonal headquarters of North Western Railway.