Animals and tracks don't mix

The challenge

Animals and train tracks are never a good mix. In a country like Australia, where a lot of travel takes place across the regional network, animal collisions are fairly common. And these collisions can cost time, money and even lives. Every time a train collides with an animal, it needs to be taken out of revenue service and transferred to a bio wash facility for cleaning and damage inspection. A company that is responsible for the maintenance of passenger rollingstock in Victoria believes there is an opportunity to ‘be smarter’ about their approach to reducing animal collisions by the regional Victorian train fleet.

The team’s task was to propose an innovative solution that reduces the need for trains to go through the bio wash process due to animal collisions.