Nalpur derailment Railways reminds safety staff to attend signal failures by issuing proper memo

New Delhi, Nov 13 (PTI) The South Eastern Railway (SER) has issued a circular asking the Signal and Telecom (S&T) Department to attend signal failures by taking failure memo and disconnection memo after it came to light in the Nalpur train derailment case that the signal failure was being attended without following due procedure.
     "It is reiterated that signal failures should be attended by taking proper failure memo and disconnection memo only," a circular, dated November 11 and issued by principal chief signal and telecommunication engineer of the SER, said.
     "After rectification and thorough testing, it should be reconnected by the proper reconnection memos as per the standard formats," it added.
     The circular, addressed to senior divisional signal and telecom engineers of Kharagpur, Adra, Chakradharpur and Ranchi rail divisions, has directed them to counsel all maintenance staff to ensure compliance.
     Railway sources said the need to issue such a reminder arose due to the recent Secunderabad-Shalimar Express train derailment on November 9 at Nalpur station near Howrah in West Bengal.
     Nalpur comes under the Kharagpur rail division of the SER zone.
     "Two serious issues came to light during the investigation of the case. First, the Station Master of Nalpur asked the technician to attend signal failure without bringing it in the record book, which is a violation of railway safety norms," a railway source said.
     A signal staff said according to the norm, the station master should have issued a failure memo to the S&T Department and entered this failure in its entry register. The preliminary investigation revealed that he did not follow this procedure.
     Even the S&T Department should have served a disconnection memo to the station master, which means that no train will be operated from the particular signal till a reconnection memo is issued after rectifying the fault. However, the probe showed that the S&T Department also did not do that.
     "The second serious issue came to light when, while rectifying the failure in the relay room, the technician's lower body part hit a switch, also called a 'latch gear', by mistake and changed the direction of the interlocking point on some other line when Secunderabad-Shalimar express was crossing it, thus causing derailment," the source added.
     Safety officials say that the Railways has taken both the issues seriously and tried to address them by taking adequate measures.
     "It has reminded safety staff to follow due procedure in case of signal failure. At the same time, the Railway Board has asked all the zones and divisions to start a safety drive to fix loose mechanical parts of the signalling system," a railway official said.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)