Railtrack vandalism: School develops technology to curtail threats to moving trains

In a bid to support the transportation sector of the Nigerian economy, students of the Noble International Secondary School, Uyo, Akwa Ibom state have developed a technology that when deployed, could alert officials of the Railway Corporation of any threat to rail tracks in the country.

Rail line Threat Detection System (RTDS) as fondly called by SitoAbasi Akpabot and Freda Anoetie Akpaffiong, Senior School (SS) 3 students of the Uyo secondary school would save the Federal Government a lot of funds that usually goes into rail tracks repairs due to vandalism.

Speaking to Nigerian Tribune in Abuja after the Innovation and Technology Expo organised by the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology, SitoAbasi and Freda said the innovation was born out of their concern about the frequent rate of rail line vandalism in the country.

According to them, “there has been a rampant issue of rail line vandalism and the country is spending a lot of money to repair these damages. So, in order to reduce the cost of repairs for our government, we have developed this technology.

“The technology when in use would keep the rail transportation system on the path of sustainable economic growth” noting that the innovation will also increase the confidence of passengers concerning the safety of the moving train.

Also speaking on the project, Adegboye Olaoluwa Ayodeji, the Coordinator of the Junior Engineers, Technicians and Scientists (JETS) explained that the system of the Rail line Threat Detector is wired in such a manner that it can help stop the trend of rail tracks vandalism in Nigeria.

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“These children use very simple theory in physics which is the theory of Voltage divider when you have a parallel connection of resistors in series with nominal resistors, there is a way voltage is divided across such connection, and that is what has been used in developing this technology.

“The project is very visible, the major component of the technology is the rail line itself because the rail lines are made of rolling steels, the resistance per kilometres of the rolling steels is about 0.3 ounce, so these rolling steels are what we use in place of the resistors.

“The rolling steels are connected in parallel, anytime there is a short circuit or an open circuit, they will be change in the output of the voltage and connection”.

He stated that “the only thing we have to do is lay two wires across the rail tracks all through the country, the two wires will serve as communication wires. Anytime someone tempers with the tracks, the resistance of the rail line will change.

“And when the resistance changes, there will be a change in output of the voltage on our system, this change in output of the voltage will trigger an alarm which will alert officials that there is a problem somewhere and when they look at the monitor screen,  they will see the exact location of the affected rail track” Olaoluwa stated.