Southern States - Andhra Pradesh   

A rare feat by two slum boys

By R. Ravikanth Reddy

HYDERABAD DEC.19. Their parents cannot even afford a decent train travel, but the two children, who are students of Mahbub College High School, have come up with interesting devices to prevent train accidents occurring due to sabotage and extend expeditious help to the victims in train mishaps. Their effort has not gone unnoticed and they ended up winning the first prize at the State Level Science Exhibition organised at Guntur recently.

P. Uday Sagar and P. Upender, sons of construction labourers from one of the biggest slums in the country, Addagutta, have shown that rich parents and corporate schools are not the prerequisites to excel. "We are the only school-going children in the family," they explain. Their brothers go for work along with their parents to support their family. "My parents have never forced me to work noticing my interest in studies," says Uday Sagar in flawless English. Interestingly, Mahabub School is one of the very few Government-aided English medium schools in the city.

Explaining their exhibit, the class IX students say that the rail-sabotage detector works on a simple scientific feature. Two optic fibre tubes that run along the track are connected to pressurised balloons kept in the station and connected to an alarm. When the extremists or terrorists cut the track, the air inside the optic fibre tubes is released leading to deflating of the balloons. "As the air in the balloon goes off, it activates the alarm bell indicating the sabotage to the Station Master," they explain.

The students have also come up with a device that detects landslides that can be devastating for the trains in the mountainous regions.

They say that it also works on a similar principle but the only difference is that here glass tubes have to be laid three metres above the ground running parallel to the tracks.

Another interesting device that was a part of their award-winning exhibit was the rail track obstruction-clearing device. The device is connected to the engine and in case of an accident and wherein workers can't remove the mangled coaches, it automatically lifts the heavy metal bogies and clears the way.

Uday Sagar acknowledges the constant support of his science teacher, T. Charles Studd, in promoting the scientific temper among them. Mr. Charles himself has been a winner at several science exhibitions held for science teachers.

"Without his support this success would not have been possible," acknowledge the students, who want to become engineers. Mr. Charles says that the school has been winning awards at several exhibitions but this is special given the background of the boys.

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