Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal Rs 5-Lakh award for motorman

Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal (Express photo/Nirmal Harindran)

Western Railway motorman Chandrashekhar Sawant, adjudged ‘Best Motorman’ in 1993, 2004 and 2016, demonstrated on Tuesday that the distinction was well deserved, when he applied the emergency brakes on his 7.06 am Churchgate-bound slow local train as it crossed Andheri station, barely 55 metres from the collapsed debris of a road overbridge lying across the tracks.

“There was a difference of hardly four minutes between the train that had passed before and mine. At 7.30 am, I was driving at a speed of 50 kmph. A part of my train could have been under the debris. By God’s grace, I applied brakes and averted a disaster… As soon as I applied the brakes, I alerted my guard, station master and the control room…” he said.

A senior motorman with WR for 27 years, the former wireless operator at Bombay Engineering Group and Company (BGE and C), Pune, Sawant has been with the Railways since 1991. Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal announced a Rs 5 lakh-award for Sawant for his quick-thinking that saved many lives.