Mumbai: Anti-cattle fence in 5 months on Vande Bharat route

Mumbai: Western Railway (WR) authorities will complete fencing the entire stretch between Mumbai Central and Gandhinagar within the next five months to prevent cattle from being run over. In the last two months, four cases of cattle being run over by the Vande Bharat Express train have been reported. The work will be completed by the end of May 2023, the general manager of WR, Mr Ashok Kumar Mishra announced on Friday.

“Construction of a fencing wall along the route will cost approximately Rs260 crore. Tenders for fencing have already been floated and will be opened in the 2nd and 3rd week of Dec,” he added.

“The fencing will be made of metal guard rails instead of a concrete wall. W-beam (wide flanges) type of fencing will be done as it is thicker and resists bend stress. Such fencing is used along expressways, especially at accident-prone areas,” Mr Mishra said.

Asked about implementation of the new fencing design, a senior WR official said conventional pre-stressed concrete walls would take two years to build and at a much greater cost. “W-beam fencing can be done in just four to five months,” said the official.

The Vande Bharat Express attains a maximum speed of 130kmph on this route. However, the maximum permissible speed of the train is 160kmph, facilitated by aerodynamics that include the cone-shaped engine-operating cabin. Because of this, the train does not have a cattle guard which one usually spots on the engines of long-distance trains In its absence, the train's nose cone gets damaged upon cattle impact and needs to be replaced each time there is an incident.