RAILWAYS: From Electrification to Resource planning, Indshine got Konkan Railways all covered
The objective was to do resource planning for electrification of the existing rail lines in the southwestern railways.
Background
Konkan Railways is a subsidiary of Indian Railways, and operates in southwestern region of India. It connects Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, and Mangalore. With a total number of 179 major bridges and 92 tunnels built through the mountainous terrain containing many rivers, it was the biggest and perhaps the most difficult railway engineering project on the Indian subcontinent during 1990s. The route is a single-line track, and is run by diesel or coal (i.e. it is not electrified). The total length of the line is about 738 kilometres (459 miles) and no part of it runs on electricity, as of now. Electrification means providing power to the trains through electricity.
In this case, Konkan Railways wanted do the electrification of 330 km section of rail lines ranging from Goa to Mangalore.
Challenges
The electrification process itself is a huge task which requires proper planning, resource mobilisation and installation. Since the terrain is mountainous consisting of several bridges and tunnels, it is difficult to mobilise the resources properly. Read the previous line again. Now, imagine the installation of electric poles and wires in the mountains, or through the rivers, it becomes very difficult to transport the large and heavy materials required for the installation.
Solution
The most efficient way to visualise the entire stretch in one go was to use drones and do the aerial videography of that section. Thus, we took this challenge and deployed our drones to map the entire stretch of 330 km of rail lines in the Konkan region. We also did the aerial videography in a direction perpendicular to the rail lines for 500 meters on both sides (1 km each) along all the 49 level crossings (LC) to help our client in planning how and where from the resources can be transported from the city to the required location, in order to facilitate the proper and timely installation.
As a result, the drones proved to be extremely helpful in planning the electrification of Konkan Railways ranging from Goa to Mangalore.
Future Scope
It would have been even more prudent if the client would have asked us orthomosaic of the region. Because, orthomosaic enables us not only to estimate and mark places at which resources & materials need to be downloaded, but also to plan and mark the routes through which the materials can be transported in vehicles.
Gallery
Let us look at the actual terrain in images captured through our drones to get a feel of how difficult can the transportation of materials and their proper installation be, and why it is utmost important to take the help of drones to get an overview of the entire terrain and plan the routes for transportation an storage of materials accordingly.
About Indshine
Indshine provides enterprise drone solutions to highways, railways, mining, smart city, power transmission, forestry etc. Please visit www.indshine.com to know more. If you have any query or want a demo, kindly drop us an email at info@indshine.com.
