Railways lets coach with broken spring to run 450kmSECR runs train for 450km with broken spring coach

Nagpur: The South East Central Railway (SECR) on Thursday put safety of hundreds of passengers at risk when it allowed a train to run for over 450km with a broken spring.
According to railway sources, primary spring of an ordinary three-tier coach (16324) of 12102 Howrah-LTT Janeshwari Express was found broken near Bilaspur. The train arrived at Bilaspur two hours late at 11am.

It was expected that the coach would be replaced at Bilaspur, which has zonal headquarters of SECR having adequate infrastructure and staff. But the train was allowed to proceed without replacing the coach.

Interestingly, the coach was not replaced at Raipur, which is a big division having coach maintenance facilities and also at Gondia, a junction with requisite facilities.

However, Central Railway received a message at 4.45pm that spring of the coach was broken and the coach needs to be replaced. The train, which arrives at 4.20pm at Nagpur, reached three hours late at 7.27pm. The Central Railway had its team ready and replaced the defective coach in an hour. The train left with replaced coach (181173) at 8.48pm.

“This is serious violation of safety norms as the primary spring is a key part on which the load of the coach depends. It would have also led to derailment risking lives of the passengers,” said sources.

When sought to know, SECR senior divisional commercial manager (SrDCM) Ashutosh Shrivastav said, “It is true that the fault was detected at Bilaspur but the division might have thought it to be a minor problem. Carriage and wagon staff was deployed from Raipur on the coach.”

Shrivastav said speed restriction of 80kmph was imposed after the fault was detected. He admitted that the coach was replaced at Nagpur.