IIT Madras team designs safer railway footboard
Posted on: 25/Jan/2016 9:39:49 AM
A group of students from IIT Madras have designed a semi automatic footboard that will make it safer for passengers to board and get down from railway coaches. The design was released at the institute`s tech festival Shaastra.
The design is one of three that won the Indian Railways Design Challenge. Officials from the railways have said that they will try out the modification in upcoming coaches.
The team Innovators comprised of mechanical and civil engineering students. Say the members of the team, On arrival at the station, the guard should press a centrally-connected switch so that the steps, with multiple pin joints and controlled by single pneumatic cylinder and micro-controllers, roll out. When the switch is pressed again, these would fold back... Every year, hundreds of passengers get either maimed or even killed while entering or exiting trains through the steep footboard. This is because of the large gap between the platform and the coach... After taking the maximum and minimum gap into consideration (229-305 mm) across India, with no major modifications in the coach design, our mechanism can help 22-24 people comfortably entrain and detrain within 180 to 250 seconds.
An organiser of the event said, One of the team members, whose father lost a limb while getting into a train, came up with this innovative automatic footboard design for Southern Railway coaches. This could end the woes of the elderly and differently abled persons.
A Southern Railways official said, We are generally skeptical when it comes to student projects, but today their projects were outstanding. The winners will be given a chance to work on their ideas with Railway engineers to develop them and we will try it on our railway coaches.
