The trains started running again today on the section where the worst railway accident in India of this century took place on Friday, which caused the death of 275 people and left more than a thousand injured.
“Circulation was resumed on both railway lines 51 hours after the derailment,” said the Ministry of Railways on the Twitter social network, sharing images of several trains leaving a station at night, in the presence of officials and workers.
The reestablishment of circulation comes after the removal of the debris from the 21 wagons derailed in the accident, which lasted more than a day, after the conclusion of the search and rescue mission for the victims, said the ministry.
According to the latest report from the health department of the state of Odisha, in eastern India, in addition to the 275 deaths already recorded, the disaster caused 1,175 injuries, of which 344 are still hospitalized.
The accident was caused by an error in the signaling system, causing one of the three trains involved (two of them passenger) to change lines, said on Sunday the Minister of Railways, Ashwini Vaishnaw.
“Who did this and what the reasons were is something that will be found out during the investigation,” said the minister in an interview with the New Delhi television channel, quoted by the AP.
The Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency had already advanced that preliminary investigations indicate that the signal given to the Coromandel Express train to enter the main line had later been withdrawn.
The train entered another line, known as the circular line, colliding with a goods train that was parked there, according to PTI.
The accident occurred at 19:20 local time (13:50 in Lisbon) on Friday, near a station in the locality of Bahanaga, in the state of Odisha, 1,600 kilometers northeast of the capital New Delhi.
Ten to 12 carriages of a train derailed and the wreckage of some of the carriages fell onto a nearby track, explained Indian Railways spokesman Amitabh Sharma.
This debris, added the official, hit another passenger train, which was traveling in the opposite direction. A third freight train was also involved in the accident.
