Railways to build 1,000 km of boundary walls in worst affected section

New Delhi: The Railways will build 1,000 km of boundary walls over the next six months in sections of its network where maximum cases of cattle being run over by trains are recorded, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Wednesday.

According to official data, cattle runovers affected 200 trains in the first nine days of October. As many as 4,000 trains have been affected so far this year.

"We are working seriously on the issue of building boundary walls. We are looking at two different designs. While we have approved one, which is a sturdy wall, 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.

He also stated that conventional boundary walls will not be able to solve the problem of cattle run over but will end up affecting villagers around the area.

The minister, however, did not give any information on the material that will be used for building the boundary walls to make them sturdy enough to not only keep the cattle away from railway tracks but also protect them from human intervention.

Cattle run overs can cause serious damage to trains, derailment and delay them.

The nose of the Mumbai-Ahmedabad Vande Bharat Express train, which was launched on October 1, was damaged owing to three cattle run overs in the first nine days of the month.

According to information accessed by PTI, with more than 6,500 of the 26,000 cattle run cases in 2020-21, North Central Railway is one of the worst affected zones. It covers 3,000 km of tracks and hosts parts of Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah corridors.

It includes divisions like Agra, Jhansi and Prayagraj, and is the gateway for trains from the east to reach the northern parts of India.

The stretches identified for building boundary walls include sections in North Central Railways and Northern Railways -- in the Jhansi Division between Virangana Lakshmibai-Gwalior section, Prayagraj Division between Pt Deen Dayal Upadhyay-Prayagraj section, Moradabad Division between Alam Nagar and Shahjehanpur, Lucknow Division between Alam Nagar and Lucknow.

The Northern Railways zone recorded the highest number of cattle runover cases -- nearly 6,800 -- across divisions of Moradabad and Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, Firozpur in Punjab, Ambala in Haryana, and Delhi in 2022, officials said.