The recent rail tragedy — the Visakhapatnam-Rayagada Passenger ramming the rear of Visakhapatnam-Palasa Passenger near Vizianagaram with 14 people dead — calls for serious introspection by the Indian Railways (IR).
It started with the catastrophic Balasore accident in June, the worst in the last 28 years, that left 300 dead and a thousand injured. The interlocking of signals was tampered with by a manual interposition to signal Coromandel Express via main line while its route was set to an occupied loop line, resulting in a three-way collision.
There had been a series of human errors which caused the accident: (i) Erroneous signalling circuit alteration and wrong labelling in 2018 and mismatch with the completion drawing escaping detection in multiple tests since then; (ii) Improper procedure of level crossing work on the day of the accident, which compounded the circuitry problem; (iii) Failure of the station staff to react to the unusual electrical response (flickering of the indicator light on the panel), which stabilised at a wrong indication, suggesting a fault in the circuit, a fallout of (i).
What was shocking is that an error in the circuit and its labelling, with the potential to cause an accident, had existed in the system since 2018, and had gone uncorrected for so many years.
I wrote that this appeared to be an aberration as the safety record of IR had improved significantly in the last five/six years due to elimination of all unmanned level crossings and increased attention to track maintenance. Sadly, I spoke too soon!
Some measures
Nevertheless, I had suggested some measures: A quick one-time drive with IR’s own safety team at each station to conduct functional checks of circuits as well as physical verification of on-site circuits with completion drawings followed by the same exercise by specially-contracted third party experts.
In the long term, deployment of AI to bring rail safety on firmer ground; massive data related to train running from station data-loggers and powerful microprocessors on rolling stock is available but cocooned in departmental silos which can be collated for daily alerts. There doesn’t seem to be any significant movement in these areas. Although Kavach would not have prevented the accident, it would have reduced the impact of the collision and therefore a strong follow-up on installation of Kavach was called for.
Spate of accidents
On October 11, five people died and 30 were injured when the Delhi-Kamakhya North East Express derailed near Buxar. An internal assessment by IR found “fault in track” as the probable cause of the derailment. This brought in focus the need to allot maintenance blocks religiously and attend to maintenance and upgrade of track infrastructure, which, in any case, is a sine quo non due to increase in traffic on IR.
On October 25, a fire broke out in four coaches of the Patalkot Express train near Agra resulting in injuries to some passengers.
Today, all relevant materials used in rail vehicles must follow the EN 45545 standard in order to achieve the highest level of safety possible in the event of a fire. IR has also adopted it but it remains mainly on paper. The floodgates are opened to all kinds of vendors and while the prototype approval may go through stringent testing, series supplies are sub-standard and incomplete or improper tests are accepted. It is doubtful that most of the furnishing materials in use would pass the stringent test regime of the EN standard and even the latest coaches would not have the required fire retardancy.
And now this Vizianagaram accident! It does appear to be a case of error on the part of the loco pilot who ignored a red signal to stop. But human error by an individual cannot absolve IR of its greater responsibility; such errors cannot be totally eliminated and that is where technology steps in; in our case, Kavach, a unique signalling system developed by IR engineers.
Hike Kavach capacities
Why is the progress of Kavach installation so slow? A case in point is the inexplicable statement by the Ministry that the efforts to expedite the deployment of Kavach were hampered by industrial capacity constraints. It is the job of IR to create capacities through a partnership based on trust if IR’s safety record has to improve.
Modern trains and swanky stations have great visibility and therefore, politicians like to celebrate them. While the hype about Vande Bharat and redeveloped stations is understandable, IR would not progress merely on the shoulders of these optics.
There is a lot more to be done; to begin with, upgrade of track infrastructure, modernisation of signalling system by large-scale installation of Kavach and use of AI to collate the vast amount of train running data, used only for postmortem today in isolation, and generate meaningful alerts. For safety works, funds are not a problem, but execution remains a concern.
The writer is Retd. General Manager/Indian Railways and leader of Train 18/Vande Bharat project