South Central Railway committed to public safety, removes 486 UMLCs

Hyderabad: The South Central Railway (SCR) has eliminated 486 unmanned level crossings since 2015. Indian Railways had initiated the process of totally eliminating the unmanned level crossings as a mission in a phased manner. The effort received a fillip and thrust in the last two years. 
SCR undertook the task of eliminating the unmanned level crossings, suitably replacing them by provision of Limited Height Subways/Road Under Bridges, converting some to manned gates and eliminating a few all together, with due emphasis on ensuring public convenience and safety. 

In the last 2 years, 269 UMLCs were removed on SCR, mostly with provision of Limited Height Subways (LHS) in a short period of 18 months by adopting innovative methods. The method adopted by the rail engineers, entailed readying of pre-cast Reinforced Concrete Cement (RCC) boxes  for building the LHS vents in advance, taking short blocks of three hours regulation to train services in the section of the work, undertaking fast excavation of earth using heavy duty machinery, placing of temporary pre-fabricated iron girders on either sides of the track for insertion of RCC boxes to act as the permanent Limited Height Subway at the spot, filling up the earth besides the newly readied LHS and restore normalcy of train operations within a short time. This method led to bare minimal impact on train services and was instrumental in elimination of UMLCs on war footing.