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Railway transportation, as a pillar of modern civilization, unavoidably suffers from external risk factors such as natural disasters, track breakages, and train collisions, which lead to substantial loss of life and property. Therefore, there is an urgent need to design a mechanism for warning and preventing railway accidents in order to diminish costs. We propose an add-on solution to the current system, which equips a train with a multifunctional pilot vehicle in the front: the vehicle pilots its mother train, warning it of impending danger, and stopping it if required. Specifically, the pilot vehicle is equipped with a wireless communication device to converse with the mother train, a ranging device for measuring the real-time distance from the mother train, a camera to capture the railway conditions ahead and recognize anomaly situations, and other sensors (e.g., collision detector and tiltmeter) to monitor its own conditions …