Odisha accident | Senior official had alerted Railway on serious flaws in signalling system

In February this year, a senior railway official had flagged the issue of the faulty signalling system which is now suspected to be the cause of the tragic train accident in South Eastern Railway on May 2, 2023, that left about 288 passengers dead and over 900 injured.

In February this year, a senior railway official had flagged the issue of the faulty signalling system which is now suspected to be the cause of the tragic train accident in South Eastern Railway on May 2, 2023, that left about 288 passengers dead and over 900 injured.

The official had precisely pointed to the issue of how the track route was getting altered after trains passed the signal given for another line. Pointing out that a major disaster was averted due to the alertness of a Loco Pilot in South Western Railway (SWR), he said the “incident indicates that there are serious flaws in the system, where the route of dispatch gets altered after a train starts on signals with the correct appearance of the route in the Station master’s panel. This contravenes the essence and basic principles of interlocking,” he had said.

In his letter to the Principal Chief Signal & Telecommunications Engineer with copies marked to the General Manager of SWR and others, Hari Shankar Verma, Principal Chief Operations Manager referred to the “serious unsafe incident” that happened at Hosadurga Road Station of Birur-Chikjajur section of Mysore Division on February 8, 2023.

Flagging the issue the next day, he said a major accident was averted due to the alertness of the Loco Pilot of Train No 12649 Sampark Kranthi Express. Noticing that signal was cleared for passing in one line but the path was altered to another track where a goods train was stationed, the Loco Pilot had brought the train to a halt thus averting a head-on collision.

Mr. Verma said the Signal Maintainer had not served a disconnection memo to the Station Master to seek his permission to carry out the repair of the signal failure. Had he done so, the Station Master would have followed the protocol of safe movement of trains.

“The present incident must be viewed very seriously and immediate corrective actions are required to be taken to rectify the system faults and also sensitise the staff for not venturing into shortcuts leading to major mishap,” he had said.

The official said if the signal maintenance system was not monitored and corrected immediately, it would result in recurrence and serious accidents. “It is high time that some serious work is done on this front to ensure that the precious lives and safety of travelling public and railway men are not put at risk,” he had said.