Railways to build walls on worst-impacted routes to contain cattle hits

Plans are to build 1,000 km of walls across sections, no change on Vande Bharat nose panel, damage to which brought the issue of cattle hits to the fore

In order to contain frequent cases of cattle hits that endanger train travel, Indian Railways will build newly-designed walls around tracks on the worst-affected sections of railway routes totalling 1,000 kilometres, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Wednesday.

"We are working seriously on the issue of building boundary walls. We are looking at two different designs. We have approved one, which is a sturdy wall, and over the next five to six months, we plan to build 1,000 km of such walls across sections to determine if the design works," Vaishnaw said.

The issue came to light after the Gandhinagar-Mumbai Vande Bharat train needed a facelift barely days after its launch, prompting discussions on the safety of the train amid repeated cattle run over (CRO) cases. The nose panel of the trainset was broken on all the occasions, and had to be replaced with spare cones later.

Meanwhile, railways, so far, has maintained that the nose panel, which was designed to propel the train to higher speeds through its aerodynamic design, is sacrificial by design and the cattle hits have been accounted for.

Meanwhile, Vaishnaw also said that there is a need for newer, better designed walls as regular fences will not help solve the issue but cause further obstructions to villagers and farmers. He did not delve into the design specifications of these new walls or how they will directly combat the issue of cattle hits.

A majority of railway tracks pass through farmlands or grazing lands, and even though railways is working on eliminating unmanned level crossings, a large number of CROs occur at no-crossing zones.