Around 50 hours after Odisha train accident, trial runs over; most trains set to resume on Monday

KOLKATA/BAHANAGA/BHUBANESWAR: Barely 51 hours after the tragic railway accident in Balasore’s Bahanaga, trial runs were completed late Sunday night on the Down line of the affected stretch (Chennai-Howrah). The Up line was restored earlier in the day. After a trolley run, a goods train passed the affected stretch safely under the watch of railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and senior officials.
The track-restoration work at the affected site is “almost over” and most trains could return to the route as early as Monday, railway officials said hours after running two special Howrah-Balasore MEMU trains on Sunday.

Mega repair, restoration work on war footing
“We have a deep pain in our heart, but I also wish to congratulate all those who have worked relentlessly for restoring services,” said railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw as a goods train passed through the affected stretch in Bahanaga on Sunday. Vaishnaw has been camping at the site since Saturday morning along with his cabinet colleague Dharmendra Pradahan.
Aditya Kumar Chowdhary, CPRO of South-Eastern Railway (SER), said all trains on the Kolkata-Chennai trunk route would resume. “We will reschedule the cancelled trains and start restoring services,” Chowdhary said. More than 90 long-distance trains had been cancelled and another 50 diverted.

The Howrah-Balasore MEMUs run on Sunday helped short-distance travellers. One of the two local trains left Howrah at 10.30am while the other departed at 1pm, stopping at all stations. Similarly, a special train left Bhadrak for Chennai at 1pm, halting at Cuttack, Bhubaneswar and all major places along the way.
The rapid restoration was undertaken on a “war-footing” at Bahanaga on Vaishnaw’s watch, with 300 personnel clearing debris and the derailed coaches of the Coromandel Express and Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express, besides a third parked goods train.