Odisha train crash due to criminal neglect of safety protocols in signalling, says railway expert

The railway mishap involving three trains in Odisha’s Balasore district was an act of criminal negligence that prima facie seemed to have resulted from signalling failure, a railway expert has said.

Friday’s accident involving three trains – the Coromandel Express, SMVT Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express and a good train – had left 288 passengers dead and injured 900 others at the time of filing this story.

“All stations of the Indian Railways have an upline and a downline, with a couple of loops located for slow-moving trains on either side depending on their traffic density. The station at Balasore had one up mainline and one down mainline. Similarly, a loop line each was located next to the upline and downline,” said retired general manager of East Central Railway and railway expert Lalit Chandra Trivedi.

In this case, the Coromandel Express was the up train, while the SMVT Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express was the down train.

If a goods train is moving ahead of an express train, the latter is given precedence by moving the good train to the loop line.

“The mainline point for the Coromandel Express was at the station, with the loop line already occupied by a goods train. Under normal circumstances, the passenger train would have passed through the upline. However, it was also moved to the loop line on nearing the station,” said Trivedi.

The express train got derailed after ramming into the waiting goods train, with the resulting impact scattering some of its coaches to infringe the mainline.

“The SMVT Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express coming from the downline or opposite side rammed into the coaches of Coromandel Express lying on the tracks at a high speed. The resulting triple accident is one of the rarest of the rare instances in rail transport,” averred Trivedi.

A case of signalling failure

Trivedi said that prima facie the accident appeared to have resulted from a signalling failure which first resulted in the collision of the Coromandel Express with the goods train, followed by the SMVT Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express colliding with coaches lying on the tracks.

“The Railway signalling system is highly foolproof and in case any of the steps are missed, the signal automatically turns red leaving trains waiting on tracks for hours. Therefore, unless someone interferes with the system, such a mishap can’t occur,” he declared.

Trivedi who spent 40 years with the Indian Railways, moreover assured that the railway continued to be one of the safest modes of transport as such mishaps resulted from human negligence than mechanical failure.

“Such an accident cannot occur unless someone interferes with the standard operating procedure (SOP) guidelines with criminal intent or in a criminal manner,” he added.

He said the exact cause of the mishap would get identified after reading the data logger, also called the event recorder.

Like the black box in an aircraft, every locomotive and the signalling room of a railway station is equipped with the device. While the data recorder in the locomotive registered multiple parameters during its running, the one at the station recorded the signalling parameters.

Kavach safety system wouldn’t have helped

Trivedi also ruled out the possibility of the indigenously developed Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system Kavach preventing the accident.

“Most people are confused about Kavach’s functioning. For instance, if the SMVT Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express had Kavach, could the accident have been prevented? No! The system doesn’t work unless it is installed in all locomotives, stations and level crossings, accompanied by sensors and special wiring,” he observed.

Besides, given its high cost, it can only be implemented in a phased manner. Installing Kavach on a locomotive presently costs Rs 70 lakh and a station Rs 40 lakh, with the cost of installing it on a level crossing separate.

“Just installing Kavach on a locomotive doesn’t make it accident-proof. It is like making an electric locomotive without provisioning for overhead electric wiring,” he informed.

Regretting one of the worst accidents in the Railways’ history other experts urged a fast-tracking of the ongoing modernisation of the world’s fourth-largest rail network.

“We have now various new technologies such as AI-based solutions for the inspection of railway assets such as tracks and rolling stock while they are in use. With many of the inspections still being undertaken manually, we need to institute the adoption of new technologies so that such events do not recur through corrective actions,” opined co-founder and president of the deep tech firm Insightzz, Bharat Salhotra.

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