TN girl’s gadget to keep rail tracks clean

NAGERCOIL/TAMIL NADU: It was Lalu Prasad’s turn to ignite minds. When 12-year-old Masha Nazeem read the railway minister’s speech last year cautioning officials that they would be punished if cleanliness was not maintained, she decided to find a way out.

Almost a year later the railways is working on a design by the young inventor from Tamil Nadu’s Nagercoil to end the stink on the tracks. Masha presented her design - Hygienic Drainage Disposal System - before minister of state for railways R Velu and members of the Railway Board in New Delhi on August 23. She also had a ten-minute audience with President APJ Abdul Kalam who even asked her to patent the invention.

Back at St Joseph’s Convent Higher Secondary School in Nagercoil, the eighth-standard student is busy with exams. She says: “Authorities can punish those who soil railway tracks. But they are helpless when it comes to passengers. So when I read Lalu’s  speech, I wanted to design a device that will keep railway tracks clean.”

Masha’s design is deceptively simple. The waste from the toilet is collected in a tank below the compartment. The engine driver can close the tanks with the push of a button as the train approaches a station and release the waste at some other place. A series of solenoid valves keep everything under the driver’s control.

Masha said her  invention was genuine. “IIT Kanpur is also developing a hi-tech toilet and they are using controlled discharge. But I had developed my design a year ago.”

Masha is inspired by her surroundings. In Tirunelveli, she designed a conveyor belt to transport the students’ bags across the street. “There was a busy stretch of road between two schools and an overbridge for students to cross the road. But nobody used the bridge because it was tough to carry bags up the 102 steps. I designed an underground conveyor belt that could be manually operated,” Masha says.