The All India Loco Running Staff Association has appealed to the Commissioner of Railway Safety, South Eastern Circle, to take into consideration various issues like work pressure and ‘signal abnormalities’ while preparing his final report on the derailment of the Chennai–Trivandrum Mail and its collision with a suburban Electrical Multiple Unit (EMU) earlier this month.
On May 5, the Mail rammed the EMU that was crossing railway lines while on its way to Pattabhiram Military Siding station. Six people were injured and the following week, Sudarson Nayak, Commissioner of Railway Safety, South Eastern Circle made a spot inspection as part of an official probe.
In the memorandum to the official, R. Murali, South Zone secretary of AILRSA, recalled instances of the signal abnormalities on the Chennai – Tirupati and Chennai – Gummidipoondi sector. Under such circumstances, it would be “appropriate to enquire into the above incidents with relevant datalogger reports while enquiring into the accident of 12623 (Chennai – Trivandrum Mail) hitting the EMU at Pattabhiram to unearth the real causes for the accident and to avoid such incidences in future,” the memorandum said.
Further, the crew involved in the incident were from Erode and were not thoroughly acquainted with signalling on the Chennai – Jollarpettai section, unlike crew from Chennai Division, association officials pointed out. They also said that the pressure to maintain punctuality on the locomotive pilots caused a lot of strain as they are forced to operate the train at maximum possible speed all the time, the petition said.
