Kanchanjunga Express train accident a result of failure at all levels of Railway hierarchy

Those who studied the crash say that staff at multiple levels were unaware of rules and procedures or wilfully violated them.

The wreckage of trains a day after the collision between the Kanchanjunga Express and a goods train, near Rangapani railway station on June 18. | Photo Credit: PTI

It is hardly the track the newly sworn-in union government expected to be on—a train wreck in Darjeeling, the picturesque hill station in West Bengal. Worse, sources tell Frontline that the train crash was the result of failures at multiple levels of the Railways hierarchy, and cannot be blamed on human or mechanical error alone.

So, what happened? At 8.55 am on June 17, a freight train loaded with containers rammed into the Kolkata-bound Kanchanjunga Express, killing 10 people, injuring nine others severely, and injuring 32 more. Railway staff who have studied the accident say that multiple levels of the organisation were unaware of rules and procedures or wilfully violated them.

Railway rules regarding failure of track circuits

The Darjeeling section of the railway line saw a failure of track circuits due to thunderstorms and lightning. This led to the failure of automatic signals between Rangapani and Chatterhat at 5.50 am on June 17. The Railways has General & Subsidiary Rules (G&SR) to govern such breakdowns and failures. As per Railway G&SR 9.12/1, the System of Working changes from Automatic Block System to Absolute Block System when the Signaling Department declares the failure as “prolonged” or “likely to last for some time or cause serious delay”. The signal failure on this stretch was not declared a prolonged failure.

Railway rules specify that when there is a failure of the automatic signals, a train is required to stop for a minute or so at each signal, and must travel at less than 10 km per hour between signals. A paper authority as well as a “line clear ticket” is given to trains to pass the signals.

Remember, the circuit failure happened some hours before the Kanchanjunga Express was due. During that time, seven trains had been given the authority to pass the signals.

According to G&SR 9.01, Authority T/A 912 was issued to all the seven trains which departed from Rangapani station after the failure. It was after this that train No. DN 13174 Kanchanjunga Exp (Agartala-Sealdah) was proceeding in line with the above G&SR position and given Authority and was stopping at the signals. It had stopped at signal number “AS650” between Rangapani and Chatterhat stations for the prescribed time.

Two trains, one track

The goods train had left Rangapani with the same authority, even though there was another train on the same section. Under Railway laws, in case of defective signals, there should be only one train in a section: one on the Up track and one on the Down track. “This did not happen in this section. Subsequent trains were accorded permission to go,” one source said.

In effect, the same procedure that is followed when automatic signalling is working faultlessly was followed when the signals had malfunctioned. Otherwise, the container train would have been held back at the earlier station, and would have received a “line-clear” signal only after the express train reached the next station.

People gather at the site after a goods train hit the Sealdah-bound Kanchanjunga Express from behind near Darjeeling on June 17. | Photo Credit: ANI

T/A 912 is only part of the authority, and constitutes permission to move across multiple faulty signals. Another piece of paper, termed the “line clear ticket”, has also to be issued, according to the Railway rules and procedures. T/A 912, read with the line clear ticket, provides the authority for a train to proceed from one station to the next. Without both these, a train cannot proceed. The second form was not given to the driver of the goods train.

By all accounts, none of those involved in operating the train knew that this was a necessary condition for a train to move from one station to the other. As many as seven trains had passed the section. This means that the rule of not moving without a line clear ticket was flouted almost routinely. This implicates the station masters of both stations, the train drivers and guards in the catchment (in this case, the North Frontier Railway), controllers sitting at the district headquarters and their divisional, zonal and Railway board bosses.

“It is safe to assume that in the case of earlier signal failures, this was the procedure followed. This means that nobody is questioning it, nobody has noticed it,” the source said. What that also means is that no inspections have found any discrepancy, and it also means that the oversight established at each level—from Railway board to divisional—did not work.

All rules flouted

A source in the Railways said that as perthe gateman at NC 9 (which is around 1 km before the accident location) and as per the train manager, the goods train was travelling at 40-50 km per hour, instead of the recommended 10 km per hour in case of signal failure.

‘’There are a lot of such procedural failures,’’ a Railways source told Frontline. ‘’Of course, there is the problem of the loco pilot of the container train ignoring many provisions. Apart from that, the other driver, of the express train too, has not followed procedure. Everybody else in the hierarchy too appeared to either not know the procedures or have willfully not followed these.”