Behenga Bazaar Trains Collision

Train Accidents causing 275 deaths and many thousands injured

1.Bahanaga Bazar railway station is a railway station on Kharagpur–Puri line, part of the Howrah–Chennai main line under Kharagpur railway division of South Eastern Railway zone. It is situated at Asimila, Bahanaga in Balasore district in the Indian state of Odisha.

2.World very recently ?came to know about this small town “Bahanaga Bazar” in Odisha due to the fact that a serious trains accident occurred involving three trains, two high speed passenger moving trains and one stationary goods train. Immediately news flashed throughout the world and restoration work started. The trend of reporting, blame game, responsibility throwing to others, Ministry/Deptt biases, many mouths? talking in different versions with a hidden motive inside and that was how to take the maximum advantage, either politically or departmentally or Ministry or the persons involved and their interests, too much cacophony by design in most of the cases, that truth was ?buried somewhere under hush hush tons of many many mouths.

But the real purpose of this noise was how to take max advantages which always took a turn toward Modi Hatao campaign in 2024 elections.

3. Even so called Specialists and Authorities penned detailed articles mostly in following styles;

A.??? Chronology of events with lot of gory cut and paste photographs.

B.???? Who said what clearly avoiding any responsibility of reference to them.

C.???? Writing about accident with juicy stories.

D.??? Airing the Author political inclinations.

E.???? Third party narration of incidents without taking any responsibility of making any incidences.

F.????? Airing and showing their own (Writer) biases.

G.??? Human side stories on the fire of emotions.

H.??? Some writers wrote about the pains of society by claiming the ownership and sole proprietary ship of human sufferings.

4. Various specialists suddenly appeared from nowhere like mushrooms on the wet lands of emotions where, emotions and sentiments ran very high. In the din of these cacophony, the rational thinking and rational thought always became the first casualty.

5. On this station, panel interlocking was working when this accident happened. For the understanding of readers the following needs? detailed description.

A.??? Points-Mechanism to change direction of trains with the help of electric point motors run by a stable electric supply backed by suitable Diesel Generating sets for emergency supply with auto start facility in case of electric failures.

B.???? The Signals (Electricity backed lights) which gives the indication to start and stop to the Loco pilots which are again backed by emergency DG sets. Often this system of signalling is MAUQ (Multi Aspect Colour Light signals), distant signal, a permissive signal only which is not a stop signal but it gives the indication of the Home signal which is located ??about 1100 meters ?ahead from Home signal (Which is about 180 meters? ahead of any point which also acts as first stop signal.)

C.???? Interlocking means that points ?and signals are electrically coupled together in the sense that in which direction is point is set, the only same signal can be taken off (green).

D.??? Also on panels, enough indication is available to show which line ?is free and which line is occupied.

E.???? The points? and signals are operated on panel by Station master by pressing push buttons on receipt of clearance from ahead stations with the help of block instruments based on the speed, sometimes one station ahead and sometimes 2-3-4 stations ahead in series for non-stopping faster trains.

6. ?One of the disturbing features in this accident was that permission of route cancellation had been given to the station master backed by necessary precautions like block counters duly registered in a register and duty Station Master who was duty bound to register such events.

7. The following were other disturbing features;

A.??? There are generally 3 Station masters (SM) who are junior people and a Station Superintendent (SS) who is incharge of the station and this SS? was on day duty on that day.

B.???? In night shift, only Junior shift SM are available and specially around 3.00-5.00 AM when? the alertness level is of the lowest.

C.???? The panel interlocking is highly complicated electronic circuitry controlled by many? many logic modules. Specially these logics are designed to keep fail safe modules i,e if there is any failure anywhere ?all signals are supposed to be red aspected resulting a complete halt to all the trains on this stations and no? all clear message can be given to both the adjoining stations on each side.

D.??? Later on the investigations showed that the point motor and signal cables including power cables renewal work was in progress and the power cables got interchanged between signal and point motor.

8. If that was the case why logic circuits failed in this case which Logic circuits should never have been allowed to permit the home Signal green which means that there was a deeper malaise than what it appears to eyes. What was ?the reality which is always hidden under bureaucratic tangles.

9. The panel interlocking was consisting of a Board on which the buttons of point machines and signals are situated and in some cases, this Board was and is being replaced by VDU ( Video Display Unit) something like our LED/LCD TV which is acting as Monitor and a mouse acting on various places of monitor which triggers the point motor or signal for displayed movements.

10. On this Board or VDU units, the track circuiting patches were also displayed on which any track portion occupied by the trains displayed red and interlocking is designed in such a manner that any conflicting signal and point motor operations is not possible at all even if the operator presses the button for the related signals and point motor.

11. On these Boards or VDU units, the indication of the point position and its controlling signals were supposed to be displayed and conflicting point motor position and its controlling signals was supposed to trigger the entire system with all ?signals in danger position (Red aspect). The mystery in this accident was duty stationmaster failed to take notice of the Board or in other possibility, this type of situation where cables got interchanged between motor and signals was not catered for while designing the logic circuits.

12. The DC voltage to point motor and signals are different then why the signals misbehaved in high voltages and shown green and also why point motors (High initial current required) got operated at lower voltages meant for signals, that is still a mystery.

13. The logic circuits were designed and operated in two manners in older design i,e partly by Integrated circuits( Electronic) and partly by mechanical relays. It is not know whether this system was replaced by fully IC based design or not.

14.Let us discuss the maintenance of these systems. These systems are being maintained by age old maintenance staff who were proficient in the maintenance of old mechanical systems and with no training or with very small training, these maintenance staff were considered maintenance experts of highly complex IC based systems on the basis of their long experience in mechanical system. Off late recently, these systems were being maintained and outsourced to the private contractors who were always facing shortage of trained staff. In case of any failure, after few hours only, the Contractors maintenance staff were supposed to go to the failure sites.

15.In all probability in this case, the system’s autofeedback based action either not taken care off in the design of the system or the feedback based action was tempered/not taken into consideration or carelessly neglected the various warnings from the system. As already explained that these auto feed back signals require high amount of technical knowledge and experience of Railway Staff who were supposed to take action and in reality they could not understand the seriousness of the situation. In any case, at this odd hours the operating staff only was supposed to understand the equipment language and take necessary action since at that hour, all over the Indian Railways, the operating Station Masters were supposed to take action.

16.Lastly and sadly the only possibility ?was that the operating staff ?could not understand the machine language. Again with heavy heart, the author having about 37 years of Railway experience came to see and know in many many cases, either the operating staff/Signalling staff broke open the mechanical lock of the Relay Rooms for many many maintenance operations without the concurrence and knowledge of other department.

17. With heavy heart, we as a Railway people have to agree that we are having more and strong allegiance to our department rather than Railway as a Responsible staff.