After keeping wild elephants away from railway tracks traversing through the forests of Western Ghats in Kerala-Tamil Nadu border, engineers of Southern Railway has come out with yet another ingenious innovation to address the region’s perennial ‘Monkey By The Tail’ menace. The monkey menace has become so severe that various divisions of Indian Railways ranging from Gujarat to Madhya Pradesh and elsewhere have floated tenders for installing anti-monkey devises.
Yes, monkeys, the common ones as well as the rare lion-tailed monkeys of the Western Ghats, have been keeping Indian Railways on tenterhooks for decades, especially after the electrification of the tracks. They come in groups, climb over the masts which carry the Over Head Electric (OHE) traction. It is these OHE traction wires which feed the trains with the power to move.
“We don’t know whether they (the monkeys) were aware of the fact. But they always climb the masts and touch the live portion of the OHE resulting in tripping to the feeder circuit breakers. Many times, we have seen the monkeys getting electrocuted. But it was humanly impossible to man the entire stretch of the tracks which have been laid through the forests,” said S Jayakrishnan, senior divisional electrical engineer, Southern Railway.
In addition to the casualties among the monkeys, the train services too got disrupted and delayed causing hardship to both the Railways and passengers. “It is because of these lion tailed monkeys, the Government of Kerala was forced to shelve the Silent Valley Hydro Electric Project,” explained MK Gopinath, public relations officer, Southern Railway.
When the monkey menace went beyond control, Jayakrishnan got up a team of engineers from Palakkadu and they designed an innovative Anti-Monkey Climbing Device which they tested on one of the masts, which had come under frequent attack from the monkeys. “It is a 1.5 meter tall metallic fabricated frame with a 50 to 70 diameter. The portion of the mast with the live OHE portion will be covered with this frame making it impossible for the monkeys to climb the mast. We found from six months’ observation that the monkeys could not climb the metallic frame because of the smooth surface of the cylindrical shaped drum,” said Jayakrishnan.
More than 1,000 masts in the stretch are being fitted with the new AMCD on a war footing to keep the monkeys away. “Instances of trains getting delayed because of the monkey menace has come down drastically. The AMCD not only saves expensive OHE equipment but also protect wild life,” said Anand Prakash, divisional railway manager, southern railway.