COIMBATORE: Southern Railway has commenced preliminary work for the construction of an underpass to facilitate easy and safe access for wild elephants at km 505A/400-500 in the railway line B coming under the Madukkarai forest range.
Once completed, the underpass will help to prevent wild elephants from crossing the railway tracks, in search of water and food, and getting hit by trains. The underpass is the first-of-its-kind project in southern railway and the Centre has sanctioned Rs 7.49 crore for it. The project is to be completed in 24 months.
According to sources in Palakkad railway division temporary railway bridge girders and Christ Church Cribs which is used as temporary stagings in bridge construction/rehabilitation works, in supporting restricted head girders or relieving girders under traffic with restricted speed up to a height of 1800 mm etc have been loaded near the spot.
"We will launch the two temporary girders within the next few weeks. However, this will be done considering the climatic condition as soil moisture will be considered. Train movement would be suspended for a few hours on line B to facilitate the work. The vertical clearance of the subway will be 6 metres and the width of the passage under the subway will be 18.3 metres," the official added
"The substructure for the underpass will be constructed using cast-in-situ method duly providing temporary girder and the superstructure is composite girder which will be launched by side slewing methodology," the official added
The construction work for the second subway will be taken up at km506/900-506A/00 on the same railway line only after the completion of the first subway work. According to sources, of the 186 wild elephants that died after being hit by trains across the country in the ten years till 2020, five elephants were killed in Tamil Nadu. The Ministry of Environment and Forests' 'Project elephant' division gave this information in an RTI reply filed by activist R Pandiraja in December 2021.
Southern railway commenced the underpass work based on the direction from Madras High Court order in February. Pandiraja said, "We will come to know whether the subway project is successful only when the animals start going inside. We need to analyse and discuss the ways with forest officials and elephant expert to make the animals use the subway."