Title - Railway officials brave rains to keep trains on track

NAGPUR: Even as heavy rains on Tuesday night brought miseries for passengers at Nagpur station, railway officials braved the downpour to ensure that passing trains do not go off-track.As rains lashed the city, water from adjoining flyovers and the roadsides entered the circulating area on the west side of the station. It subsequently entered the station, water logging tracks on platform numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4, where most of the passing trains are admitted. The waiting area near the current ticket booking counters, the office of the station manager and his deputy were also flooded.As the situation went haywire, panic buttons were pressed and senior officials including divisional railway manager (DRM) Brijesh Dixit and additional DRM Uday Borwankar along with departmental heads rushed to the station.

"The last train to somehow leave the station was at 9pm. As the heavy downpour continued, the drains overflowed, causing a bigger problem. Submergence of tracks led to the automatic signals controlling train movement going out of order," said a railway official.

The water logging on tracks affected at least half a dozen express trains between 10pm and 1.30am. Some trains, including Nagpur-Secunderabad, Nizamuddin-Yashwantpur, Howrah-CSTM, Nizamuddin-Trivendrum, Hyderabad-Jaipur and Nagpur-Bilaspur Shivnath, were delayed by 30 to 60 minutes. Some trains were stopped at Ajni, Godhni and Kalamna railway stations.

"It was a peculiar situation as tracks were completely submerged. This disabled the signalling circuits, which are automatically controlled from the route relay interlocking (RRI) cabin. We had to run the trains manually by clamping points. Track patrolling was also intensified," Borwankar told TOI.

There were at least 50 supervisors from health, engineering, signalling, electrical and operating departments at work through the night. The operating department employees had to search for the points on the waterlogged tracks braving rains to ensure smooth movement of traffic. Normalcy was finally restored around 5.30am on Wednesday.