After it was done on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad route, the Indian Railways is set to fence several tracks passing through Delhi and nearby regions coming under Northern Railway to avoid accidents like cattle run-over among others.
For this, 139 locations have been identified, out of which 22 have been prioritized based on the accidents that occurred in the last decade.
These accidents have been causing problems for train operations, particularly for Vande Bharat Express. Rail tracks have also seen incidents of stone pelting and runovers in the past few years.
“While we operate trains like Vande Bharat Express at a speed of 160 kmph, there are some basic requirements that need to be fulfilled. Firstly, trains cannot run these trains with open windows and doors, hence requiring AC trains. Secondly, there should be no obstacles on the track. To avoid the latter, we have identified sections that will be fenced,”Shobhan Chaudhuri, General Manager, Northern Railways told us.
While Railways has been working on increasing the speed of sections from 130 kmph to 160 kmph on the New Delhi-Howrah and New Delhi-Mumbai route, the first priority will be given to the section where the track is fit for 160 kmph speed and Vande Bharat Express.
“We have identified three sections where 160 kmph is the operational speed. The Delhi to Palwal, Delhi to Ghaziabad, and Kanpur-Lucknow are the sections where work will be completed by March 2024,” said Chaudhuri in response to queries by CNN-News 18.
Fencing of tracks was also raised in the review meeting of the zone recently.
“Fencing is something that is the need of the hour. This will be done pocket wise as there are multiple challenges. However, this will be beneficial for not just safety but also for punctuality,” a railway officer said.
“Not just Vande Bharat, we face these issues with other trains like Rajdhani and Shatabdi too and in every case, train movement gets halted,” he added.
Out of existing 15 services, Northern Railways operate three of Vande Bharat Express while other two, are operated by foreign railways come to the zone.
From the initial days of the service that was from New Delhi to Varanasi and then from New Delhi to Katra as well, incidents of stone pelting and runovers had been reported. However this will now be avoided.
This comes after the announcement of Rail Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw who had stressed on the need and implementation of the project after a lot of deliberation over design last year.
Western Railways have already initiated a similar project to cover a distance of about 622 kms between Mumbai and Ahmedabad at a cost of 245.26 cr.
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