With two major train accidents within ten days, a spotlight has fallen on the safety measures of the Indian Railways.
The Rae Bareli accident – where seven passengers were killed after nine coaches of the Malda Town-Delhi New Farakka Express derailed in Uttar Pradesh on October 10 – has particularly raised questions over the slow pace at which the Indian Railways has been inducting LHB (Linke Hofmann Busch) design coaches.
Out of the nine coaches that derailed at Rae Bareli, two capsized, and as a result, seven passengers lost their lives. According to senior officials, causalities in the New Farakka Express mishap may have been avoided had it been equipped with LHB-design coaches.
These modern LHB coaches, as opposed to conventional coaches, are equipped with strong couplers that prevent coaches from capsizing.
Even though the Indian Railways had already decided to stop manufacturing conventional coaches and replace the entire fleet of Mail/Express trains with LHB ones because of its strong safety features, nearly 600 LHB coaches are lying idle now.
The problem is that the new coaches cannot be made operational without power cars. The accumulation of LHB coaches without power cars was revealed in a review meeting of the Railway Board last week, sources said.
“There is a need for about 78 power cars to make these LHB coaches functional as trains. So, in the absence of power cars, these LHB coaches are lying idle,” sources involved in train operation said.
The Rae Bareli accident was followed by another one at a much bigger scale at the Amritsar station. On Dussehra (October 19), the Jalandhar-Amritsar DMU train ran over the crowd gathered to watch the burning of Ravana effigy, killing at least 59 people.
Not with standing the bold front maintained by Indian Railways, it is likely that heavy casualties could have been avoided had the railway authorities taken note of the annual Dussehra function happening near the busy track and accordingly alerted loco pilots to go slow.
