Pune: Loco pilot applies emergency brakes to avert major mishap

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A major mishap was averted by a loco pilot by applying emergency brakes on time as some miscreants had kept iron pieces on railways tracks, said Pune Divisional Railway Manager (DRM) Milind Deuskar.

"Iron pieces were found twice on tracks between Rukadi and Hatkalangane railway stations in the past 10 days. Loco pilot saw it at the right time and pulled emergency brakes, averting a major mishap," Deuskar said on Friday.

"In December last year, some children placed steel pieces on rail track in Vathar, derailing 6 wheels of the engine. 8-10 such incidents have taken place so far. Loco pilots averted them but it is not actually their work. They have other works and we cannot depend on them for safety," he added.

In another case, an overspeeding harbour line local exceeded its halt mark and rammed into the buffer stop at Mumbai CSMT platform one on Friday morning. Railway officials confirmed there were no injuries to anyone.

Chief public relations officer of Central Railway Sunil Udasi said, "The local slightly touched and not dashed the buffers. No repercussions on any services and no damages were caused during the incident."

In another incident, the Harbour line on the Central railway faced two disruptions in four hours leading to the collapse of peak hour services. Officials said a crack was discovered in the track between Belapur and Seawoods station around 9.30am, which led to the delay of three local trains.

Even after the crack was fixed around 9.54am, trains continued to run slow thanks to the bunching effect. As these trains were coming back on the track, the downline services were affected after a local train bound for Panvel developed a snag around 11.30am near Kharghar.

This led to the detention of nine local trains one behind the other. The faulty train restarted after a while, but not before delaying the entire morning rush hour. A commuter onboard the train said the train at Kharghar station refused to move and kept on waiting for quite some time. The pantographs were brought down and reset after which the train moved again on its own by 12.30pm. It took around 1.30pm for things to normalise.

(With inputs from ANI)

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