Date:05/02/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/02/05/stories/2007020519930100.htm

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Probe ordered into Godavari incident

J. Balaji

VISAKHAPATNAM: Union Minister of State for Railways R. Velu has ordered a probe into the sudden delinking of the coaches and the locomotive of the 2727 Visakhapatnam-Hyderabad Godavari Express in Visakhapatnam for two days - Friday and Saturday.

Talking to The Hindu from Chennai on Sunday, the Minister said the General Manager of the South Central Railway in Hyderabad would depute a three-member team of senior officials to probe the incident and submit a report to the Railway Ministry.

The Minister expressed concern over the incident as it involved the safety of the passengers. He promised that the railways would take all the necessary steps to ensure that the incident did not recur.

Meanwhile, sources in the SCR said the administration had ordered for a detailed technical review of the "centre buffer coupling" of the new generation coaches of the Godavari Express. Unlike the normal screw-type coupling used in ordinary trains, the CBC, widely used in goods trains, gets delinked some times if there is difference in the heights between the locomotive and the coaches while running.

Though all coaches of the CBC have an apparatus to prevent such disengagement, officials wonder how the apparatus also failed on both occasions.

They admitted that it was a strange coincidence the CBC had failed consecutively in a particular train though the rakes and the locomotives were different on both days.