When Eastern Railway was run from Secunderabad

It has been satisfying to do a smooth transition in taking over the systems and also in handing over without major data loss, says official

When senior IRTS - Indian Railway Traffic Service (IRTS) officer Ravi P. Padi reached home after a normal day’s work earlier this March, little did he realise that not only he, but his entire team would had had to rush back and literally be on their toes for the next four days. CRIS (Centre for Railway Information Systems), the IT arm of the Indian Railways, and its Secunderabad unit had to scramble to take over the computerised railway operations of the entire Eastern region within a couple of hours on March 8 night. The region has East Coast Railway, Eastern Railway, East Central Railway and Northeast Frontier Railways with at least 1,000 trains, passenger and freight trains moving to and from across various terminals. The massive fire which broke out in the high-rise Eastern Railway headquarters at Kolkata killed nine persons, including a senior railway officer, on the day and the rescue teams had immediately cut power supply to all systems, shutting down the UPS too. This led to an unprecedented massive breakdown of services.