WB train collision: A 9-min, 7-km mystery
At the last station before it went out of control, all was well with the Uttarbanga Express. But at 2.04 am it rammed Ranchi-bound Vananchal Express at Sainthia station, killing 69 people and injuring more than 150. Joydeep Thakur reports.Tracking the doubts
It was 1.53 am on Monday morning when the Kolkata bound Uttarbanga Express from Cooch Behar stopped at Gadadharpur station, 7 km away from Sainthia. It stopped because the line to Sainthia was not clear.
"It was an unscheduled stop as the train had not been given the green signal," said Pramod Kumar, station manager at Gadadharpur.
He and others at Gadadharpur told HT the train driver Madhav Chandra Dey and his assistant Nirmal Mandal were both perfectly fine - as was the train. It departed at 1.55 am.
At 2.04 am it rammed Ranchi-bound Vananchal Express at Sainthia station, killing 69 people and injuring more than 150.
What happened in those nine minutes across a 7 km stretch? Immediately after leaving Gadadharpur, the train began accelerating at an alarming rate.
Two km outside Sainthia, there stands a large sign where the track curves, setting trains a speed limit of 30 km per hour. The Uttarbanga completely ignored the sign. It went on to ignore every signal thereafter.
At Sainthia, Assistant Station Manager A Mukherjee frantically called the two drivers on their walkie talkies.
He wanted to tell them to slow down, as they were approaching at a dangerously high speed, and the Vananchal Express stood on the same track. He never got through.
In a desperate bid to stave off the calamity, Mukherjee began urging everyone on the platform concerned and on the train - through the public address system - to clear out.
But most people in the stationary train were asleep at that hour. He tried to divert the Uttar Banga to another track - to no avail.
"If a train driver reports a brake failure or jumps a signal, we try to divert the train to a buffer line. But it takes about 10-15 seconds. This train didn't give us even that much time," a Sainthia station official said.