Deadly India rail crash caused by faulty signal connections made during repair – World

Workers repairing a rail-road barrier in India made faulty connections to the network’s automated signaling system, leading to the country’s worst train disaster in two decades, an official investigation has found. -an.

The June 2 crash at Bahanaga Bazar station, in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, killed 288 people and injured more than 1,000.

Disaster struck when a passenger train hit a stationary freight train, jumped off the tracks and hit another passenger train coming from the opposite direction.

In the investigation report, it was seen ReutersCommission of Railway Safety (CRS) investigators said the first collision was caused by changes made to the signaling circuit to fix frequent problems at a nearby rail-road barrier.

The local railway staff did not have a standard circuit diagram which led to a faulty connection in the signaling system when they tried to remove the boom-barrier circuit for repair, it said. The malfunctioning system led the passenger train into the path of the freight train, it said.

Reuters last month reported for the first time that investigators are focusing on repairing the rail barrier and its possible connection to a manual bypass of the signaling system.

Indian Railways, the fourth largest railway network in the world, is a state monopoly run by the Railway Board. The board reports to the Railways Ministry.

The rail network is undergoing a $30 billion makeover with gleaming new trains and modern stations under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s push to improve infrastructure and connectivity but the crash raises questions whether safety gets enough attention.

The CRS inspection report said there were lapses at several levels in the signal and telecom department and standard operating procedures were not followed during the repairs.