A few days back a railway disaster happened in Odisha, involving three trains, which left around 275 people dead and 1000 people injured. The disaster happened at Bahanaga Bazar station in the Balasore district of Odisha, about 270 km south of Kolkata. The incident happened around 7 pm in the evening, and three trains were involved in the accident, and they were:
- Coromandel Express, which had started just hours before from Shalimar railway station in West Bengal, and headed to the southern city of Chennai.
- Howrah Superfast Express, which had started from Yesvantpur in Bengaluru and was headed to Howrah.
- A stationary goods train was standing at the Bahanaga Bazaar station.
The Bahanaga Bazar station has four tracks. Lines 1 & 4 had goods trains parked on them. The passenger trains were running parallelly and simultaneously on tracks two and three. It looks like the following sequence might have happened
- Coromandel Express heading south to Chennai and Howrah Superfast Express heading north were both within the speed limit of 130 kph.
- It looks like due to signal failure or any other fault, Coromandel Express leaves the main line where it was running and joins the loop line where a goods train was parked.
- As the goods train was loaded with a heavy load of iron ore, the impact of Coromandel Express hitting the goods train was felt by Coromandel Express and many of its coaches derailed.
- It so happened that, at the same time Howrah Superfast Express was passing on the northbound main lines, the derailed coaches of Coromandel Express hit the Superfast train which resulted in the derailing of some coaches of this train also.
- In total 17 coaches of two passenger trains were derailed and severely damaged.
This accident/crash of a train is among the five deadliest accidents in the history of railways.
After the accident happened, instead of offering help to the railway ministry and the government, the leaders of the opposition parties started the blame game operation and demanded the resignation of the Railway Minister. One part also started asking the question of why the anti-collision system KAVACH was not installed on the trains, if Kavach was installed then this accident could have been averted.
What is Kavach
It is an indigenously developed Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system. It is a state-of-art electronic system with Safety Integrity Level-4 (SIL-4) standards. It is meant to provide protection by preventing trains to pass the signal at Red and avoid collision. It activates the train’s braking system automatically if the driver fails to control the train as per speed instructions. In addition, it prevents the collision between two locomotives equipped with a functional Kavach system. The system also relays SOS messages during emergency situations. An added feature is the centralized live monitoring of train movements through a Network Monitoring System. Kavach is one of the cheapest SIL-4-certified technologies where the probability of error is 1 in 10,000 years.
This traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS) with the help of equipment on board of the locomotive and transmission towers at stations connected with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags, helps in two-way communication between the station master and loco-pilot to convey any emergency message. The instrument panel inside the cabin helps the loco-pilot know about the signal n advance without visual sighting, and the permissible speeds to be maintained. If a red signal is jumped and two trains come face to face on the same line, the technology automatically takes over and applies sudden brakes. Additionally, the hooter activates by itself when approaching a level crossing which serves as a big boon to loco-pilots during fog conditions when visibility is low.
Both the trains involved in the above accident were not fitted with the Kavach system, as this system is yet to be implemented in Howrah –Chennai section. As per experts, even if Kavach was installed on Coromandel Express, still the accident could not be averted in this case, as when the Coromandel Express left the main line and came on the loop line ( why that happened is still under investigation), the distance between Coromandel Express and parked goods train was very less, and with Coromandel Express running at + 120 km speed, the sudden braking system also would have failed even when applied because of short distance.
Now, why the Coromandel Express left the main line and entered the loop line is a matter of probe, because how the tracks on the main line got connected to the loop line, and Coromandel Express running at high speed entered the loop lone and crashed with stationary goods train parked on the loop line.
For the last three days, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has parked himself at the accident site, and he is personally supervising/monitoring all the activities for providing help to the injured passengers, and relatives of deceased passengers.
The present Railway Minister is highly educated, the people who are condemning him can never come near his caliber. The politicians who are attacking him are uneducated, a ex-CM who was involved in a fodder scam and convicted is asking about his resignation. This same ex-CM and his family are still under investigation for asking for a piece of land for giving jobs in the Railway when he was Railway Minister.
Let us wait and watch for the result of the probe by CBI in this case.
Waiting for your views on this blog.
Anil Malik
Mumbai, India
5th June 2023