NE NEWS SERVICE
PALAKKAD, MAY 21
In a significant initiative aimed at mitigating the risks associated with elephants trespassing onto railway tracks, R. N. Singh, General Manager of Southern Railway, accompanied by Arun Kumar Chaturvedi, Divisional Railway Manager, Palakkad and other Railway Officials conducted a comprehensive inspection of the entire elephant corridor between Madukkarai and Kottekkad stations on Saturday.
The General Manager, Southern Railway had sanctioned the work of installation of “Elephant Intrusion Detection System” at a total cost of Rs. 15.42 crores, to be installed in the entire elephant corridor covering both A & B lines between Madukkarai and Kottekkad stations of Tamil Nadu and Kerala states during last week.
“OFC based Distributed Acoustic Sensing with AI based Elephant Intrusion Detection System” detects the elephant intrusion near railway track and generate necessary audio/visual alarms to station masters and loco pilots in real time and the speed of the train can be controlled. Thus the life of elephant may be saved, possibility of derailment and disruption of train operations, associated hardship to passengers can be avoided.
Working principle and technology used
The system uses the “OFC based Distributed Acoustic Sensing with AI” as the core technology. The working principle of the system depends on the change in pattern of laser pulses in the optical fibre. Measurement of time delay between sent and received laser pulse decides the location of the event. Identification of the event is done by measuring the modulation in the back scattered light signal.
The General Manager inspected the recently built second elephant underpass between Walayar and Ettimadai station of Tamil Nadu state along with the officers of Palakkad division. During his inspection he said that Southern Railway is making all efforts to complete “Elephant Intrusion Detection System” as soon as possible. It is pertinent to mention that Southern Railway has built two underpasses costing Rs. 11.53 crores between Walayar and Ettimadai stations recently to facilitate the safe passage of elephants.
The General Manager also reviewed the progress of other associated works such as widening of cutting and widening of embankments which will facilitate the elephants to walk away from the track, cleaning the vegetation near the track to prevent the elephants coming closer to the track for food, and solar lighting for improving the visibility for the Loco Pilot / Asst Loco Pilot onboard to spot the elephant at a distance during night, etc, says a release from M Senthamil Selvan, Chief Public Relations Officer on Tuesday.
