As cattle hits rise, Railways toys with idea of fencing along tracks

Cattle hits on tracks affected 200 trains in the first nine days of October — the newly launched semi-high-speed Vande Bharat Express among them — and nearly 4,000 trains have been impacted so far this year.

“We are working seriously on the issue of building boundary walls,” Vaishnaw said.

“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.”

He said conventional boundary walls will not solve the problem of cattle run-over, and will only affect villagers around the area. In 2021-22, as many as 26,000 cattle run-over cases were recorded by Railways from across the country.

As per directives of the Commissioner of Railway Safety, fencing of tracks is a must if a train crosses the speed of 130 km per hour.

The Delhi-Howrah and Delhi-Mumbai corridors are undergoing a massive speed upgrade to host speed up to 160 km per hour, so fencing of tracks is part of the plan.

Several innovative designs are being looked at this time, sources said. This is because past experiences with fencing have not been pleasant for the Railways — iron fences tend to get vandalised, at times even stolen.

Villagers do not take kindly to fencing, which they see as a hurdle in free movement. Moreover, cattle get stuck if they stray into fenced tracks.

On Delhi-Agra route, Railways had earlier tried fences at stretches made of concrete sleeper bars used on tracks. But fencing has generally never worked for Indian Railways.

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