The Mysuru-Darbhanga Bagmati Express collided with a freight train on October 11.
New Delhi:
The joint inspection note of a collision between a passenger train and a freight train near Chennai last week, prepared by seven senior railway officials, suggests that the train may have derailed at the junction.
Another report by a three-member committee of senior railway officials had earlier raised fears of sabotage after some loose or opened parts were found during an on-site inspection.
However, the content of the joint note, which was drawn up shortly after the accident, does not mention any sabotage angle.
A railway spokesperson said the joint report cannot conclusively state the reasons for the accident, but it could be one of the inputs for the Railway Safety Commissioner to prepare the final investigation report.
The Mysuru-Darbhanga Bagmati Express rammed a stationary goods train at Kavaraipettai Railway Station in Chennai Railway Division around 8.30 pm on October 11, injuring several passengers.
“The experts who prepared the joint note did not say that they found any mechanical part at the accident scene that was open or loose. Instead, they found nuts, bolts, rails, tongue rails and other similar items in broken state,” the spokesperson said. a safety expert after analyzing the inspection report.
He added: “The kind of damage that these seven officials recorded in the joint note shows that the train derailed at the intersection of the main line and the loop line.” The safety expert's statement is supported by the data logger's yard simulation video, which showed that the train was running on both the main line and the loop line.
“Since the train can only move in one direction, the simulation video from the data logger indicates that it may have derailed at the interlocking point. As the locomotive and some carriages moved towards the loop line and collided with the freight train, the other coaches are everywhere, which also violates the main line,” said KP Arya, who retired as chief signal and telecom engineer/information technology from the Northern Railway.
Mr Arya, who has reviewed the joint note, has expressed concern about a technical defect in the tracks and the mechanisms interlocking the derailment.
He said that when the trains are assembled to change tracks, at many points a small gap (but beyond acceptable limits) remains between the track rail and the middle or later part of the tongue rail, allowing stones, small wooden blocks and other similar items get stuck.
This problem sometimes leads to derailment of trains as the monitoring system fails to track the entangled objects between the rail and the tongue rail, Mr Arya said.
“The joint note stated that they recovered a shattered gunny bag and a piece of tongue rail from the accident site. There is a possibility that the gunny bag may have gotten between the opening of the tongue rail and the stock rail,” he added.
Initially, while discussing the possible cause of the collision, railway officials had ruled that the passenger train had been given a green signal for the main line, but it entered a turning line and struck a freight train already waiting on the loop line.
Safety experts had attributed the lack of coordination between the signaling system and the interlock to a fault in the signaling system.
This is unusual because according to safety experts, in a blocking signaling system, the signaling aspect follows the interlocking of the tracks, meaning that if the signal is green for the main line, the interlocking is automatically set so that the train comes onto the main line.
A senior railway official said, “The data logger video, the joint note and the crew's statement that they experienced a jolt at the interlocking point all indicate that the train derailed at the intersection. mistake or an act of sabotage? I think it will only come to light after the ongoing investigation by the Commissioner for Railway Safety and the National Investigation Agency.