Western Railway completes 20% of fencing on Mumbai-Gandhinagar Vande Bharat route after cattle runover cases

The Western Railway has completed nearly 20% work of metal beam fencing on the route of Vande Bharat Express between Mumbai and Gandhinagar in Gujarat. The 622km stretch is being fenced to prevent incidents of cattle being run over by the Vande Bharat express train. At an estimated cost of Rs 245.26 crore, the project is the first of its kind initiative by the Indian Railways to prevent such incidents.

Fencing of the 120-km-long route done

“Fencing of the 120km route has been done and the remaining work will be completed in the next few months,” said a WR official, adding that the guard rails are made up of two W-beams, making the fencing robust. The project assumes further significance as the incidents adversely affect rail operations and also result in loss of rail property.

WR hits new milestones

Another senior official said that besides the project, the WR also set new records in various fields during the concluded financial year 2022-23. “The WR garnered commercial revenue of Rs 21,795 crore, which is 44.65% higher than the last fiscal. It also achieved the best ever freight loading of 108.09 million tonnes in 2022-23, almost 23% more than in 2022 when the figure stood at 87.91 million tonnes,” the official said.

The other milestones in the last fiscal included gauge conversion and doubling work of lines stretching up to 371km, construction of 40 foot overbridges, electrification of 890km route and strengthening of 33 bridges for enhancing the speed up to 160 kmph.