Kasaragod: In another case of signalling error by railway staff, the Mangaluru-Thiruvananthapuram Maveli Express pulled over at the wrong track at Kanhangad Railway Station Thursday evening, giving a scare to passengers. Officials said it was not a system error but a "human error" of the station master.
The train which was scheduled to reach Kanhangad at 6.33 pm chugged in 10 minutes late and did not take the line on Platform No. 1. Instead, it stopped on the track between Platform No. 1. and Platform No. 2.
When contacted, Additional Divisional Railway Manager (ADRM) Anil Kumar said the error was on the part of the Station Master. "The SM wrongly signalled the train to take the middle track," he said over the phone from Palakkad. The officer insisted that it was a human error on the part of the station manager and not the failure of the signalling system.
The failure of the signalling system had killed 275 persons in Odisha's Balasore in June.
In Kanhangad, there was no threat of an accident, Anil Kumar said. If another train was scheduled on the middle track, the Station Master would not be able to signal Maveli Express to that track, he said.
When asked how the Station Master committed the mistake, the ADRM said the official was distracted while addressing a passenger.
He said the passengers stranded on the platform were assisted and given an additional eight minutes to board the Maveli Express. The train left Kanhangad at 6.54 pm.
Before the Balasore accident, Railway Board member R N Sunkar in April wrote to general managers of all Zonal Railways about signalling staff taking "shortcuts" causing a potential hazard to the safety of train operations.
In the letter, he listed out five incidents in January, February, and March this year when trains took the wrong track because of signalling errors. The incidents were at Lucknow (UP), Hosadurga (Karnataka), Ludhiana (Punjab), Kharkopar (Maharashtra) and Bagratawa (Madhya Pradesh). "The above incidents indicate that despite repeated instructions from the Railway Board, the ground situation is not improving and signalling staff are continuing to adopt shortcut methods for clearing signals without checking correspondence from the site and without proper exchange of disconnections/ re-connection memo, with operating staff," Sunkar wrote.
