The Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) will award two boys on Republic Day for helping the drivers of an express train prevent an accident.
Teenagers Surya and Bikas Das, both from a village in central Assam’s Puranigudam, had made the Guwahati-Silghat Town Rajya Rani Express train come to a halt on January 7. Driver Bibekananda Biswas and assistant driver Surya Prasad Singh observed a major rail fracture about 20 metres from where the locomotive had stopped.
“The two boys and the locomotive pilots will be awarded, which will be an R-Day first for our railway zone,” NFR spokesperson Pranav Jyoti Sharma said.
Drivers C.S. Gogoi and Duryodhan Reddy and their deputies Rajib Kumar and Vinod Kumar Bagdi will also be awarded for applying emergency brakes to avoid running down herds of elephants crossing the tracks in two separate cases.
Chayan Das and Diwakar Kumar who piloted the first goods train across the 4.94 km Bogibeel Bridge four days before its inauguration on December 25 would be awarded too.
The NFR did not specify the rewards.
