| Railways brace for fog woes, cross fingers by riteshexpert on 13 December, 2012 - 12:01 AM | ||
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 riteshexpert | Railways brace for fog woes, cross fingers on 13 December, 2012 - 12:01 AM | |
With the onset of winter, railway authorities here - and throughout northern and eastern India - have begun to brace for the biggest and the deadliest challenge they face along with the chill: foggy conditions that every year disrupt traffic.But even as the rail authorities have decided to cancel, partially cancel and divert more than a dozen trains between January 1, 2013, and February 18, they say efforts are being undertaken "to minimize the impact of the fog".Officials of Northern Railway (NR) and North Eastern Railway (NER) have already begun training and deputing gangmen and other personnel for patrolling the tracks so that they get "used to the foggy conditions and working on the alert systems during the peak fog period of January", an official told IANS.Divisional Railway manager (DRM) Vinod Kumar Yadav said that other than cancellation of trains in extreme conditions, the railways was "trying to increase awareness amongst key personnel to minimize the chances of mishaps during near-blind visibility conditions. The officials would also obtain feedback from the gangmen to understand the "reality at ground zero", he added.S.K. Singh, the senior divisional traffic manager, said that efforts were being also made to ensure "complete and flawless coordination between the station masters, controllers, locomotive inspectors, power controllers, gatemen and fog signalmen" so as to not only minimize but completely root out the probability of any mishap. Indian Railways has already completed the work of painting the signal sighting boards, signal poles and mishap-prone railway crossing gates and this time, bright yellow and black paint has been used for better identification, an official said. | ||