No mention of sabotage in joint inspection report on train collision near Chennai

New Delhi:

The joint inspection report prepared by seven senior railway officials on a passenger-freight train collision near Chennai last week suggests that the train may have derailed at the crossing point.

Another report by a three-member committee of senior railway officials had earlier raised fears of sabotage after a site inspection found some loose or opened parts.

However, the contents of the joint note, drawn up shortly after the accident, do not mention any aspect of sabotage.

A railway spokesman said the joint report could not conclusively state the reasons for the accident, but it could be one of the inputs for the Railway Safety Commissioner in preparing the final investigation report.

The Mysuru-Darbhanga Bagmati Express rammed into a stationary goods train at Kavaraipettai railway station in Chennai railway district around 8.30 pm on October 11, injuring several passengers.

“The experts who prepared the joint note did not say that they found any opened or loosened mechanical parts at the accident site. Instead, they found nuts, bolts, rails, tongue rails and other similar items in broken condition,” said a security expert after analyzing the inspection report.

He added: “The nature of the damage recorded by these seven officials in the joint note further shows that the train derailed at the crossing point of the main line and the ring line.” The safety expert’s claim is supported by the data logger’s track simulation video, in which it turned out that the train was moving on both the main line and the ring line.

“Since the train can only move in one direction, the data logger simulation video suggests that it could have derailed at the signal box. While the locomotive and some coaches headed towards the ring line and collided with the goods train, the remaining coaches scattered all over the place and also violated the main line,” said KP Arya, who retired as chief signal and telecommunication engineer/information technology at Northern Railway .

Mr. Arya, who looked at the joint note, expressed fears that the derailment was due to technical defects in tracks and signal box mechanisms.

He said that when the interlocking is done for the change of track of the trains, in many places a small gap (but beyond the acceptable limits) remains between the stock rail and the middle or later part of the tongue rail, through which stones, small blocks of wood, etc., etc. are left stay stuck.

According to Mr. Arya, this problem sometimes leads to derailment of trains as the monitoring system cannot track the objects entangled between stock rail and tongue rail.

“The joint note stated that they found a crushed burlap bag and a piece of tongue splint at the scene of the accident. There is a possibility that the burlap bag could have gotten caught between this gap between the tongue rail and the stock rail,” he added.

When railway officials initially discussed the possible cause of the collision, they had assumed that the passenger train had received a green signal for the main line but entered a ring line and hit a freight train that was already waiting on the ring line.

Security experts had attributed the lack of coordination between the signaling system and the signal box to a fault in the signaling system.

This is unusual because, according to safety experts, in an interlocking signaling system the signaling aspect follows the interlocking of the tracks, i.e. when the signal for the main line is green, the interlocking is automatically adjusted so that the train is coming on the main line.

A senior railway official said, “The data logger video, the shared note and the crew’s statement that they experienced a jolt at the signal box all indicate that the train derailed at the crossing point. This derailment can also be traced back to mechanical causes.” Error or an act of sabotage? I think this will come to light only after the ongoing investigation by the Commissioner of Railway Safety and the National Investigation Agency.