Central Railways to file report on lessons learnt, safety planning

The Central Railways (CR) has been asked to submit an all-departmental report of what lessons it has learnt and how it plans to improve the safety and infrastructure, the cause behind four derailments at Kalyan in the past two years.

The report was asked when the chief safety officer (CSO) of the Southern Western Railway conducted an inspection of Kalyan and CST on October 21 and 22 which will be submitted to the Railway Board in Delhi.

The Kalyan derailments in the past two years have been a cause of concern among officials and the then general manager Sunil Kumar Sood had blamed the lack of mega-blocks due to various public holidays as a reason for the poor maintenance. An official on the condition of anonymity said, “This inspection was special because the Railway Board had sent these officials under the direct orders of the railway minister Suresh Prabhu since Mumbai has been seeing such derailments in its suburban section. During the checks it was revealed that certain measures like squeezing more number of rounds by the trackman could be initiated and although we already have a set mechanism in place, Mumbai’s case is unique, as we run a service on our tracks every three to five minutes.”

The most recent derailment was again seen when a CST- Kasara local left Kalyan on August 1 this year and though derailments had not caused fatalities until now, officials said that it needs special attention. Another official said, “The safety checks are given to the CSOs of other zonal railways to ensure impartiality of these checks, although these checks are done on a regular bases this was important because there seemed to be a focus on Kalyan.”

Kalyan is vital because the train lines split towards Karjat and Kasara from here and also sees a lot of originating trains towards these far off stations.