Indian Railway Traffic Service (IRTS)

The ministry of railways has to its credit and functioning, around eight civil service cadres under different categories. 

IRTS is one of the eight organised civil services under Group A categorization. The railway’s department has many divisions under it for its smooth and transparent operation. The transportation department of the Indian railways is handled and managed by the IRTS officers. 

By means of transportation, IRTS officers are indirect means of revenue generators for the department. They hold a major responsible position to bring in valued sources of assets and income to their department.

They had a different working name in the past. They were called as the Officers of the Superior Revenue Establishment concerns of the Traffic, Transportation and Commercial Department of Indian Railways division. The older name has been replaced by the present cadre given to IRTS officers. 

The UPSC commission selects the IRTS officers through the civil services examination that is conducted every year on an all India basis. 

The exam consists of three important rounds, mainly the prelims, mains, and the interview, and those candidates who are successful in all three rounds will be considered in the final list of selected candidates.

Based on their performance in the CSE and their merit ranking and personal preferences cited at the time of submitting the application, candidates will be given a chance to serve for the IRTS cadres.

In this article, we list the various details of how candidates get trained for different positions, their career progressions, pay scales, important roles, and responsibilities, etc. 

Training offered to selected IRTS candidates

This section furnishes details about training offered to newly inducted IRTS probationary officers after successfully clearing the UPSC CSE process:

• The initial foundation course training happens at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA). This course is common to all candidates who have successfully cleared the civil services exam. Before they are directed further into their posting specific specialized training, this module will teach them the basic and elementary coursework.

• In the next step of training, probationers are directed to the National Academy of Direct Taxes (NADT) located at Nagpur.

• They may also be sent to the RCVP Noronha Academy of Administration located at Bhopal optionally.

• Lastly, candidates may also be directed to Dr.Marri Chann Reddy Human Resource Development Institute situated at Hyderabad for further training.

• After the initial lessons on administration and governance, specialized in – house training is offered in the form of the esteemed railway foundation course. This course is imparted to candidates at the National Academy of Indian Railways situated in place of Vadodara.

• The next level of higher strata performance training is provided at the Indian Railway Institute of Transportation Management (IRITM). This institute is situated at Lucknow. In this particular wing of training, students get field exposure and on-job experience. They are taken on various field trips across railway wings, divisions, and activity centers. Training institutes owned by the Railways department are given a visit too in order to provide more jobs detailing to candidates. Workshops, project-specific activities are held for the candidates, and they are taken to various related railway units across the country.

• The candidates are then taken to different kinds of railways project units, including ports and establishments that have an association with the Indian railways to collaboratively educate probationers on the various facets of transportation attached with the basic framework of Indian railways. 

Posting offered

After the training process and final induction of officers into the IRTS cadres and postings, they hold various postings in different wings and divisions of railways. IRTS officers serve as operations officer and commercial officer of the transportation department, attached to the Indian Railways.

These portfolios are allotted to inducted officers soon after their training. In one of the significant divisions of the railways, officers get posted as either the Assistant Operations Manager or as the Assistant Commercial Manager. They may receive other postings in PSUs, railway ministry units, central staffing schemes, etc. 

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Roles and Responsibilities of IRTS Officers

IRTS officers are posted in important railway divisions, zonal offices and are also considered part of railway board panels. IRTS officers operate in multi functional and multidimensional roles though the span of their career owning numerous roles and responsibilities, some of the significant ones are listed below:

• Production of transportation regulations. 
• Managing the customer relation division of Railways department. 
• Railways are concerned with two types of transportation – goods and passengers. The management of goods and services comes under freight operations. Passenger safety, comfort, Customer satisfaction, and delight come under the purview of passenger transportation. 
• Resource allocation and efficient utilization of available assets and resources. 
• Asset management, calculating stocks in inventory, combining infrastructure services, and gathering productive outputs from various channels and entities. 
• Increasing operations in the commercial space. This includes role-based and goal-oriented tasks such as quoting prices, handling sales, taking care of marketing loads, etc. 
• Computerization at every level of railway operations. Ensuring availability of e-ticketing facilities, creating more bandwidth and speed for online booking facilities, and overall up-gradation of Indian railway facilities and dockets. 

Career prospects

The various levels and ranks held by the IRTS officer through his career length are listed below:

• As a secretary level officer, an IRTS officer manages the traffic department associated with the Railway board. There are separate divisions of allocation here, beginning with commercial operations, traffic systems, computerization divisions, and management information systems. Tourism and catering is also an inclusive operational wing of this level of officers. 
• They can also serve as directorates of the traffic wing, commercial operations wing, planning wings, and passenger management units. 
• Under the financial commissioner of Railways or the IRAS officers, they will serve as the economics or statistics in-charge. Here, under this wing grievance redressal systems are handled apart from computerized freight marketing activities. 
• In the zonal levels, IRTS officers serve in various important positions such as chief operations manager, chief commercial manager. Chief commercial managers take care of both passenger marketing and service handling. The chief operations manager is solely responsible for freight operations. 
• They also hold esteemed positions like chief traffic planning manager and chief claims officer in other roles. 
• The senior divisional operations manager and senior divisional traffic manager are basic roles held by IRTS officers at the divisional level. 

Indian Railway Traffic Service Ranks and Salaries

The pay scales of IRTS officers according to their respective ranking and grades are provided below:

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