Restoration of rail traffic to be delayed

By Our Staff Reporter

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, JULY 27. Normal traffic on the Shoranur- Kozhikode railway section will be resumed only by the second or third week of September as the Railways need 45 days for replacing the 10 piers of the old Kadalundi rail bridge with clusters of concrete piles.

The work, being undertaken as per the modern building practices, involves casting of 41 RCC piles at 10 pier locations and is expected to take about 45 days, according to the Railways.

The damaged pier number three of the bridge has already been replaced by suitable concrete pile foundation and all the girders have been repositioned, according to the Southern Railway.

Though it may be possible to restore movement of goods trains along the bridge, the Railways will have to comply with stipulations prescribed by the Commissioner of Railway Safety for permitting the movement of passenger traffic along the bridge.

The safety commissioner had pointed out that detailed investigations should be carried out on all the cast iron piles of the bridges to assess the structural integrity, corrosion and load carrying capacity by an expert agency.

The Railways claimed that there was no standardised or reliable procedure for carrying out such tests on cast iron piles of this design. However, the services of some reputed professional institutes has been sought and they are working out the methodology of investigating the reliability of the piles.

The time-frame required for carrying out these tests for certification appeared to be unpredictable. On conclusion of such tests, the Railways said the possibility of some of the cast iron piles not proving to be entirely reliable cannot be ruled out.

Our Staff Reporter adds from Kozhikode: In addition to the doubts expressed by the Railways was the widespread public protest on the callous attitude of the Railways to passenger safety.

The convener of the People's Committee which held an independent inquiry into the Kadalundi mishap, Dr. M. Gangadharan, termed the decision of the Railways to resume train services on the Kadalundi bridge as `suicidal'.

He said that even Indian engineers in the Gulf were horrified to see TV pictures of the piers of the bridge and the condition in which they were. One particular mechanical engineer had sent him an E-mail inviting his attention on the dangers posed by the present state of the piers of the bridge.

Dr. Gangadharan lamented the utter indifference of the State Government to the needs of the railway users in Malabar. He had sent an E-mail to the Chief Minister on July 17 requesting him to do the needful to restore rail services in the Malabar region.

Unfortunately till date there has been no response from the Chief Minister. The Government had only been an onlooker to the entire inquiry proceedings conducted by the Railways at Kadalundi. None had been deputed by it to ascertain the state of inquiry or when rail services would be restored.

Except for the extra KSRTC services which had been pressed into service to enable rail passengers to board the trains from Shoranur and Palakkad, the State Government had done precious little. Even bus services had become extremely erratic after two weeks.

Meanwhile, at the Kozhikode railway station the staff at the booking counter maintained that as per the information available to them, train services would be resumed from here from July 28.

Some of the passengers who had booked on trains from Kozhikode such as the Mangalore-Chennai Mail and West Coast Express on July 28 on the premise that train services on the route would be restored from that day have cancelled their tickets following the uncertainties prevailing. Tickets were being issued from the Kozhikode 10 days after the Kadalundi mishap.

There seems to be a tussle among railway departments on whether or not to resume traffic on the Kadalundi bridge. While the mechanical section is keen to resume services, the civil section has sought to delay it. The tussle seems to have arisen from the fact that it was a `rogue' bogie which caused the mishap or the weak pier of the 140-year-old bridge.

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Section  : Southern States
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