Kanchanjunga Express disaster | Systemic errors at multiple levels led to crash: reports

On June 17, a high-speed freight train rammed the Kanchanjunga Express in North Bengal, killing ten people and injuring 46 others.

A report by The Times of Indianow points to a series of errors that may have led to the fatal crash.

Active and retired railway officials said TOI that it indicated a system failure in the Katihar division of the Northeast Frontier Railway, where the accident had occurred.

The article points out that the automatic signal failure between Rangapani and Chatter Hat occurred at around 5:50 am.

Accordingly FrontlineRailway regulations state that in such faults, the operating system changes from the automatic block system to the absolute block system if the fault is declared as “persistent”. In this case, no such declaration was made by the Divisional Operations Managers (DOM) for three hours.

The report further states that railroad rules require that when automatic signals fail, a train must stop at each signal for about one minute and travel at less than 10 km/h between signals. In addition, trains require a written authorization called a T/A 912 and a “track clearance ticket” to pass the signals.

However, according to reports, seven trains passed through Rangapani station before the Kanchanjunga Express. Frontline reported that a paper The authority issued an alert to all seven trains as well as to the Kanchanjunga Express and the goods train that collided with it. The Kanchanjunga Express reportedly halted at every station.

The railway laws also state that in the event of signalling failures in a particular section, only one train may be on the uphill route and one on the downhill route.

However, this was not followed. The station master issued written permission to the goods train without checking whether the Kanchanjunga Express had reached the next station Chatterhat.

Another important point: the “Line Clear Card”, the second part of the required permission to continue, was not issued for any of the trains. This means that this standard was violated.