Official blame ‘non-scheduled halt’ for derailment

Mumbai: The Madurai Express, derailment which happened on July 6, is primarily said to be because of the ‘non-scheduled halt’ near Khandala station to pick up a loco-pilot. The Central Railway (CR) had ordered an enquiry of chief safety officer (CSO) who submitted it’s report to the CR headquarter.

According to a senior official of CR, who did not wish to be identified, said that the primary cause of the derailment is unscheduled halt, which was given to the express train. The secondary reason for  the derailment is walky-talky of the loco-pilots, between the front engine and rear engine (banker engine) of the train, been non-functional in the tunnel and ghat section as the former loco-pilot is unable to communicate with the latter loco-pilot.

Sources said that a loco pilot got down at Khandala station in an illusion of Lonavala station in the early hours of July 6, when he realised that it was Khandala, he asked the station master to stop the train as he had a schedule duty to pilot a train from Lonavala. A red signal was given to the Madurai Express, coming from the tunnel. The loco-pilot of front engine tried to communicate the banker engine’s pilot, that he was stopping the train, but the walky-talky did not work in the tunnel leading to the accident.        

“The frontal engine took 13 seconds to reduce the speed of the trains, while the banker engine took 21 seconds. If the message of taking a halt was communicated by the loco-pilot of frontal engine to the loco-pilot of banker engine, the incident would have been averted,” he added.

When contacted the Chief Public Relation Officer of CR, Sunil Udasi, he neither responded to the calls nor text messages.