In a bid to prevent elephants from being hit by speeding trains, East Coast Railway has decided to install an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) to detect and deter wild elephants approaching railway tracks.
The IDS will be installed in railway sections prone to elephant movements. As per direction by Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, the ECoR has obtained a sanction of ₹79.12 crore for installing IDS units near elephant corridors.
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Six railway sections consisting of 200-km stretches under Sambalpur and Khurda Road Railway Divisions has been identified to be taken up in the first phase. The sections include Maneswar-Bamur, Turekela-Lakhna, Arand-Arang Mahanadi, Norla-Therubali in Sambalpur Division and Kapilas Road-Rajathgarh-Angul, Rambha-Ganjam and Nayagarh-Porjanpur Railway Section under Khurda division.
According to the Railway Ministry, the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) was the first railway zone to take up this project on an experimental basis in the Chalsa-Hasimara Railway Section of the Dooars area under Alipurduar Division and between Lanka-Hawaipur Railway Section under Lumding Division.
“After the success of the pilot project, the NFR has now installed an IDS in all its elephant corridors in Assam and North Bengal in order to prevent the death of wild elephants due to train-hits. The pilot project has already been immensely successful in saving elephants approaching railway tracks,” it said.
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Optical-fibre sensors are used to identify the movement of wild animals at select locations and alert control offices, station masters, gateman and loco pilots. It uses a fibre optics–driven acoustic system based on the scattering phenomenon principle to sense the real-time presence of elephants around the track.
The IDS can monitor unusual movements up to a stretch of 60 km and help in detecting rail fracture, trespassing on railway tracks, unauthorised digging and landslides near tracks.
“The system’s primary application is an IDS based on the distributed acoustics sensing (DAS) technique, which should locate and detect the presence of elephants near the tracks so that the speed of the trains in the sections will be reduced,” the ECoR said. Moreover, the system would be capable of sending alarms to the loco pilot unit.
