India rail crash probe focuses on electronic track management system
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[June 05, 2023]
By YP Rajesh
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Investigators are probing an electronic track
management system that they suspect malfunctioned and caused India’s
deadliest train crash in more than two decades, railways officials said
on Sunday.
At least 275 people were killed on Friday when a passenger train hit a
stationary freight train, went off the tracks and hit another passenger
train passing in the opposite direction in the eastern state of Odisha.
In their first detailed briefing on the crash, Indian Railways officials
said that failure of the track management system was the main focus of
investigations.
The computer-controlled track management system, called the
“interlocking system”, directs a train to an empty track at the point
where two tracks meet, Sandeep Mathur, principal executive director for
signalling, told reporters.
It also coordinates and controls the signal to an oncoming train,
indicating whether the train has to move straight or switch to a new
track, he said.
“It is supposed to be tamper-proof, error-proof. It is called a
fail-safe system, even if it fails the signal will turn red and the
train will be stopped,” said Jaya Varma Sinha, a member of the Railway
Board that runs the giant state monopoly.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Jun/05/images/ads/current/skdavison_sda_PROMGRAD_2023.png)
“However, as it is being suspected, there was some kind of a problem in
the system.”
Explaining the sequence of events that led to the crash at Bahanaga
station in Balasore district, Sinha said the Coromandel Express heading
to Chennai from Kolkata moved out of the main track, entered a loop
track – a side track used to park trains – at a speed of 128 kph (80
mph) and crashed into a freight train carrying iron ore that was parked
on the loop track.
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![](../images/060523PIX/news_m8.jpg)
A train moves past damaged coaches,
after the tracks were restored, at the site of a train collision
following the accident in Balasore district in the eastern state of
Odisha, India, June 5, 2023. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/May/02/images/ads/current/guzzardo_lda022609.png)
The crash caused the engine and the first four or five coaches of
the Coromandel Express to jump the tracks, topple and hit the last
two coaches of the Yeshwantpur-Howrah train heading in the opposite
direction on the second main track, she said.
The interlocking system should not have allowed the Coromandel
Express to take the loop track, Sinha said.
She said she had spoken to the injured driver of that train and he
had told her that he was within the speed limit and had not jumped a
signal and all of this would be verified by systems that record
track and train details, she said.
She did not name the driver.
There are many “possibilities of what can go wrong,”, Sinha said.
This could include someone digging in the area through which cables
of the electronic system pass and damaging them in the process, or a
short-circuit, or a machine failing.
“99.9% there is no possibility of the machine failing but there is a
0.1% chance of failure,” she said. “That possibility is always there
in all kinds of systems.”
She did not name the supplier or manufacturer, or the age of the
system. But said it is in use across almost the entire Indian
railway network.
(Reporting by YP Rajesh; Editing by Frances Kerry)
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