Kasara train collision: Traffic to be normal by tomorrow

Kasara:  The traffic on Kalyan-Kasara section of the Central Railway in Thane district of Maharashtra, affected due to the collision between an Express and a local train last night, will be fully restored by early Saturday morning, a top official said. [caption id=“attachment_384020” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Pic used for representational purposes only. AFP[/caption] One person was killed, four were injured seriously, and nine sustained minor injuries when the Mumbai-Gondia Vidarbha Express collided with derailed bogeys of a local train between Kasara and Umbermali on Thursday night. Officials had put the death toll at three earlier, which was later revised  to one. “We will open one of the two lines by Friday mid-night and the second one by Saturday morning,” Central Railway General Manager Subodh Jain said while visiting the accident site. In the meantime, some of the long-distance trains will run via Manmad. According to Jain, the mishap occurred after the loco pilot of Vidarbha Express applied emergency brakes on spotting the derailed local train on the the tracks. The time lag between the derailed local train coming to a halt and the collision was only 1.17 seconds, and the loco pilot did the best possible thing by applying the brakes, he said, adding that this resulted in one of the bogeys of Vidarbha Express piling up on top of another. Asked if anti-collision device could have averted the incident, Jain said, “It is very unlikely for an automatic system to be effective even in the slim time lag. Manual intervention was the best possible action in such situation.” A CR statement said that Mumbai-Bhusawal Passenger (51153) and its return service have been cancelled, while Gorakhpur LTT Superfast train (12541) will be terminated at Nashik Road and Secunderabad-Mumbai Devgiri Express (17058) will be terminated at Manmad on Friday. PTI