According to officials, a Mumbai-Gandhinagar Vande Bharat Superfast Express train struck a cow on Saturday at 8:30 a.m. near the Atul station in Valsad, Gujarat, breaking the engine’s nose cover.
Since the domestically developed and produced semi-high speed train’s inauguration on September 30, there have been three instances of train-cattle collisions.
Despite being stopped for 20 minutes at the scene of the incident, the train continued on to its destination as planned.
The Western Railway (WR) personnel took the broken nose cover off and put it in the driver carriage before continuing the journey.
“On this hit with cattle, nose-cone cover of front coach or driver coach was damaged with its mounting brackets. The nose cover is designed to absorb the impact without transmitting the same to the functional parts of the train. Railway keeps sufficient nose-cones as spare. This will be replaced with new one in Mumbai Central depot during maintenance after the train returns to Mumbai in the evening,” said Sumit Thakur, chief public relations officer, Western Railway.
Two identical occurrences involving livestock being ran over by the newly launched Vande Bharat Express happened in the first week of October. On October 6, a train travelling from Mumbai to Gandhinagar struck four buffaloes between the railway stations of Vatva and Maninagar in Gujarat, killing them. The damage required an overnight replacement of its nose panel. The second incident happened the following day, on October 7, when the train struck a cow while travelling close to Anand in Gujarat.
After Dahanu Road station, there are no obstacles along the railway route, therefore cattle frequently wander into the lines. The Western Railway conducted awareness campaigns and made different notifications in villages close to the railway route to man the livestock. Western Railway officials stated that every effort is being made to stop accidents of this nature in the future.