On Friday 14 Sep 2007 12:06 pm, savita rao wrote: > http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article2 >409790.ece
On a completely unrelated note, after reading the quote below, I was wondering how such an attractive and easy thing to do is not being done more often in India - or isn't it? >A concrete block is easily procured. A pair of wire cutters can be bought >across the counter in any DIY shop. High-speed rail tracks can be accessed >easily and discreetly in innumerable lonely places across the country." That set me thinking about cow-catchers, and a Google images search of railway engines reveals that India still utilizes them as, I believe, does the US. Apparently the UK/Europe has done away with them in favor of fencing - hence the requirement for wire cutters in the article. Cow catchers can surely deal with some basic mass of something lying on the tracks. How much mass and at what speed was a question for which I could get no answers. On the topic of no answers, I often used to watch traffic zooming at 70 plus mph below a Motorway bridge in the UK and used to shudder at the thought of even a small stone being dropped onto a windshield. But things seem to work differently in India. If you drive over the Richmond Circle flyover in Bangalore, you find that buildings adjacent to the bridge have nets to stop objects thrown from cars from breaking windows. I realised this only recently. I used to think that the buildings housed BPOs and the netting was an effort to stop attrition by preventing employees from escaping from windows. shiv
