Balasore train accident: CRS investigation points at multiple lapses, wrong labelling of location box wires

The Commissioner of Railway Safety’s (CRS’s) investigation into the Balasore train accident in Odisha has found that wrong labelling of wires inside the level-crossing location box, that remained undetected for years, led to a mix-up during maintenance work, which eventually led to the Coromandel Express crashing into two other trains. The accident that took place on June 2 led to the deaths of at least 293 people. 

The report pointed out lapses at multiple levels, as per a report in The Indian Express. Apart from the signalling department, the station master, part of the operations department, has also been named in the report for failing to detect ‘abnormal behaviour’ of the signalling control system. 

The CRS report added that during the replacement work of the ‘electric lifting barrier’, the signalling staff said they were ‘misled’ by anomalies like wrong lettering on the terminal. The circuit that showed the position of the point that guides a train from one track to another had also been moved in the past.

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The location box contained wrong lettering, wrongly indicating the functions. The wiring diagram was changed in 2015 but was not done physically, the report in the daily stated. The CRS stated that the position of the circuit that detects the status of the point was shifted within the location box in 2018 but the change was not labelled accordingly on the diagram and the cable terminal rack. 

The report added that the wiring diagram of another location box in Balasore was used for the Bahanaga Bazar location box. 

According to the daily, there were indications of anomalies, such as when the station master gave the command to reverse the point from loop line to up line for Coromandel Express, the change came instantaneously, instead of the 13-14 seconds it was supposed to take. 

The CRS report added that the station master should have identified the anomaly and brought it to the notice of the signalling staff. It also added that a similar incident had taken place due to faulty wiring and cable fault at the Bankra Nayabaz station two weeks before the Balasore incident. Corrective measures could have prevented the Balasore triple train accident. 

The Coromandel Express rammed into a stationary goods train, and got derailed, crashing into the Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast train, leading to a high number of casualties.

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