The railways has decided to spend Rs 370 crore to “deep-screen” all tracks in the South Eastern Railway, the zone where the Odisha triple train accident took place on June 2 killing 291 people.
News18 accessed a tender document issued by the railways on Sunday, which details the big project as an exercise in “deep screening of all types of main line track on all broad gauge routes of South Eastern Railway”. The exercise will be done using over 150 ballast cleaning machines (BCM), which improve track resilience and restore drainage.
Dynamic track stabiliser and ballast regulating machines will subsequently be used to restore the stability of the track and redistribute track ballast. Other activities like lubrication of fish-plated rail joints and the opening and the refixing of joggled fish plates will also be done.
A railway official told News18 that this is a normal repair-cum-safety exercise conducted by the Indian Railways to ensure tracks are safe and properly serviced. But the timing of the tender in South Eastern Railway is significant as rail safety has come under the scanner after the Balasore accident.
The South Eastern Railway zone covers Odisha and West Bengal. The accident is being probed both by the Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS) as well as the CBI, and a signaling error is being speculated as a cause of the accident.
The horrific accident took place as a passenger train, the Coromandel Express, was wrongly put on the loop line where it crashed into a stationary goods train and derailed. As its coaches derailed, they fell onto the parallel track and hit the last few coaches of another passenger train, the Yesvantpur Express, passing by. This resulted in 291 deaths while several were left injured.
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