The Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) will install the intrusion detection system (IDS) along the 151-kilometre-long stretch between Alipurduar and Sevoke stations on the Dooars railway route in a bid to prevent the deaths of elephants and other wild animals on the tracks.

The tracks through reserve forests and elephant corridors are risky for wild animals.

Since 2003, when the tracks were converted to broad gauge from metre gauge, over 80 elephants have been crushed to death on them.

“We had installed IDS along a 37-kilometre-long stretch between Madarihat (near the Jaldapara National Park) and Nagrakata stations in November last year on an experimental basis,” said Amarjeet Gupta the divisional railway manager of Alipurduar railway division of the NFR.

“The results have been excellent,” he said. “There have been no incidents of elephant deaths (since the installation of the IDS). That is why we have decided to install the system on the entire stretch. Tenders have already been floated for the project.”

The IDS is a mechanism that gets activated if an elephant or any large animal comes within 10 metres of the railway tracks.

Immediately, through a network of optical fibres, a message is passed to the railway control room.

This control room, in turn, passes the alert to the loco pilots of the trains which are scheduled to cross the location, from where the message came.

This then gives the loco pilots the time to control the train speed to avoid collision with the wild animal.

If required, the loco pilot concerned can even stop the train and wait till the animal moves away from the tracks.

The safety system, railway sources said, was first installed in the NFR zone.

In due course, it will be installed in more elephant corridors and wildlife crossing zones of the country.

More infrastructure

Gupta said the NFR had recently taken up two major projects in his division — the upgrade of Alipurduar Junction and New Cooch Behar stations.

“These two would be developed into world-class railway stations, the likes of which have been done in some prominent stations of the country,” he said.

Work to build a world-class railway station is on at New Jalpaiguri, otherwise known as NJP, the largest and busiest station in north Bengal.

The railways, sources said, have identified two sites at Alipurduar Junction for a 200-bed multi-specialty hospital.

“The Union ministry of minority affairs will provide funds and the railways the land. The Union health ministry, on the other hand, will develop the hospital infrastructure. Soon, an MoU will be signed among these three ministries and necessary procedures initiated for the project,” said a source.