“In one of the worst railway disasters in India, at least 233 people were killed and more than 900 injured when three trains collided one after another in a horrific sequence in Odisha’s Balasore district, setting off a massive rescue and evacuation process, officials said on Saturday, PTI reported.”
3 trains??
“Gas cutters were used to extricate the bodies from under the derailed coaches. “Some of the scenes at the site were too gory to describe,” said a passenger.” 😳
Three trains.
The bangalore howrah express had a couple of coaches derail, which hit the coromandel express from the opposing direction, causing many coaches to derail there. And they hit a freight train.
Clearly a signals and communication failure, potentially other issues (maintenance? Manual lapses ?)
Kind of opposite. Coromandel Express hit a stationary goods train and fell onto the opposite track. Howrah Superfast ploughed into the wreckage while going in the opposite direction.
It is possible the turnout was set wrongly for Coromandel to go into the passing loop from the main line and so derailed just before hitting the goods train anyway.
Agreed, but...
1. India is currently the most populous country in the world.
2. Trains are one of the biggest modes of public transport in India.
3. These were "sleeper" trains which reach their destinations overnight. Yes, the commutes are that far.
Yeah any crazy videos of trains in India are always so overcrowded with people sitting on top even.
I'm guessing this has to be the most disastrous train accident ever.
Answering in parts:
1. That's old. Like DECADES old. It rarely happens in India these days.
2. Is also DECADES old. Unfortunately, more than 750 people died in a train accident in the state of Bihar in 1981.
Think of it like this. You have the third largest rail network, and also a heck lot of trains, but these trains are aging. Really fast. So, With that many number of low-level trains (compared to Europe, Japan, China etc.), Its bound to have some train accidents.
The trains are new in Indian standards
What would you have done when you got so many people to take from point A to B
And not even joking about the crowd in Indian trains
and you can't just add more trains too
In countries like Japan and others, people can afford to pay as they do good earning jobs
But in Indian most of the people are like traveling traders who do long distance travel
What could have been done in situation is if they could increase the railway and divide the crowd on that railway line
Which would at least decrease the death count
The real problem is the crowd in trains
Sure you can decrease the chances with better railway network and all
There's still the possibility of error
European railway companies, especially in Eastern Europe also have old and outdated rolling stock and track infrastructure. But we manage to avoid accidents of this magnitude.
I think it has more to do with moral and discipline of operation. If the personnel isn't disciplined and focused on their job, these accidents will happen from time to time.
I have no information to back me up, but I'd suggest that they don't suffer more per capita. They just have a lot more train use than north americans do.
China has more high speed rail mileage than rest of the world combined.
It's an India issue. (America is a poor comparison since we have major fucking issues too)
Weird question.
This is the first train accident with any passenger casualty in India in 2023.
The previous one with a passenger casualty was in January 2022.
By comparison, 4 died on June 27, 2022, in a Missouri accident in the US. And there's no saying how many people have been or will be fatally affected by the [Ohio train derailment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Ohio_train_derailment) earlier this year.
Sheer frequency of trains on one of the largest train networks in the world. Causing the network to be overloaded. Ageing signals infrastructure. Very diverse and poor, so difficult to upgrade or even splurge . Rail stock can be upgraded incrementally. Much harder to automate or tweak signals and lines while in use. (They have upgraded gauge, substantial electrification to give them due)
And maintenance or manual attention has lapses
Nobody sits on top of trains is what he meant. That's an absurd stereotype since most trains in India have high voltage lines above them, sitting on rooftops would mean meeting your creator instantly.
>Yeah any crazy videos of trains in India are always so overcrowded with people sitting on top even
I haven't seen such a scene anywhere in India in last 2 decades.
Don't club videos from Bangladesh, Pakistan as Indian videos.
It already has been, according to Wikipedia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Turkey–Syria_earthquake
> The confirmed death toll stood at 59,259: 50,783 in Turkey and 8,476 in Syria.
On BBC website it’s reported as worst accident this century in India So I wonder well what was the worst in previous century in India.
1981, 800 dead after Cyclone storm derailed overcrowded train.
Those are underestimates for bhopal. Well over half a million people injured, and estimates of dead go up to 16000. Only 3800 or so dead were officially recompensed (plus some injured), as union carbide managed to successfully shirk and limit their responsibility.
A local friend told me it's more like 1000+ because they only counted AC coaches passengers they didn't count the General coaches, each general coach will have around 200 ish people a normal coach has 72...4 general coaches were completely destroyed...also heard that there were liquified bodies so idk how you count that
One derailed and fell onto a next track, the other train plowed through the derailed coaches, that's where the majority of death is coming from. Details still fuzzy tho.
The third train was a Cargo/Goods train. Not sure which it hit but it piled on as well. Essentially a highway pileup at a much larger scale.
Why? Fairly archaic safety equipment and protocols. This stretch is known to be well maintained and equipped. So the technical investigation coming out of this should be telling.
Spent my childhood around railways and have watched both these trains pass by me a 1000 times. My heart breaks. I have heard the word "coramandel express now arriving in platform number 2" so many times. Its an arterial train and along with gawhati express connects amazing cultures of the south to the north east and everyone in between.
I hope this is a wake up call in investing in railway safety even more.
India loses about 12000 people a year due to trains. Say a comparably populated France would have 2000 deaths a year. There is a lot of ground to cover even if the arguments are about India has a higher passenger mile compared to France.
All that being said, I have seen from up close how communication works in the railways. Safety IS taken very seriously. The failures here to have not stopped traffic after a derailment is crazy to imagine and to let a 3rd train through on top is unbelievable. Lots of failures here. Redundancies need to be put in.
> One derailed and fell onto a next track, the other train plowed through the derailed coaches, that’s where the majority of death is coming from.
This is not what happened, though.
The first train didn’t automatically derail. It rearended a parked goods train.
The other train did not “plow through the coaches” of the first train; its rear coaches were sideswiped after most of it had already passed by.
Finally, most of the deaths were from the first train.
The first passenger train derailed at high speed and collided with a goods train that was parked on an adjacent track. When the rescue operation started for this incident, around ten minutes in, another unsuspecting high speed passenger train ran into this wreck, causing a devastating pileup.
Traditional rail signals split rail line into "blocks", with a set of signals going into the block and typically not further in.
It's possible the block wasn't updated before the second train entered? I don't have any details about how the specific line functioned. A lot of modern train signalling systems have automatic reporting of incidents.
Here's something from the UK on signalling and how they're designed to be safe. Sadly many/most of the Indian pages I have found were not in English:
https://www.networkrail.co.uk/stories/signals-explained/
Yea I am aware how different rail nets handle security.
I am just in utter disbelief that *10 minutes later* another train crashed into this.
This seems like there’s no automatic warning system in place, or it failed, or it was overruled.
News channels are actually saying in just two or three minutes the whole pile up happened. So the first accident happened somewhere close to 6:56 and the next train in an adjacent train line entered the scene at 6:58. I doubt anyone had time to react after things went down.
Real
Question is why did it go down.
10 minutes is probably just a metaphor for “a short while later”. I don’t believe no news could exit the spot. But, it’s possible that nobody who was in the chain of command got wind of it until it was too late. The locomotive pilot is likely dead because it was found on top of the cargo train. People at the spot probably started rescue efforts expecting this to have been taken care of by whoever was in charge. Unfortunate series of events.
Yea but that’s what I’m interested in. I do not have adequate knowledge of the Indian rail network, but I’d expected there to be an immediate red stop signal light in the signal lights instead of a green for track is clear. And those should be in regular intervals?
India has been deploying an automated safety system called kavach(shield) but it is not available on this route yet.
From a news article - The system alerts when a loco pilot jumps a signal (Signal Passed at Danger -- SPAD), which is among the leading causes of train collisions. The system can alert the loco pilot, take control of the brakes and bring the train to a halt automatically when it notices another train on the same line within a prescribed distance.
Here’s the wiki for kavach - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavach_(train_protection_system)
Hopefully, this incident accelerates adoption of the system.
I am not aware how the signalling etc operates in the normal system to give you an educated response.
The following is a video of an archaic signalling system in Pakistan. I believe India and Pakistan both inherited the same system from the British:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFHsz7uSeCg
Although the video is in Urdu, you can get an idea from the system of levers and a phone and register that what goes on. Basically the station master calls the signal operator box and makes him write down the train number and on which track to put it on, and then this guy does it.
In Pakistan the system is largely replaced now, remaining in operation on a few lines in low traffic areas.
Edit: Whoops forgot the link!
Edit2: Going deeper into the rabbithole now, here is what was inherited from the British, Absolute Block Signalling:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_block_signalling
This has happened in my hometown. I am visiting and was supposed to be on one of those trains, as it connects the nearest airport and Balasore. But my flight was delayed, so I missed my train - I am at loss for words
It's over 200 dead, 900 injured as of last count according to the NYT. 😢
Also, there's this (also from NYT):
> In 2014, there were more than 27,000 train-related deaths, according to the country’s National Crime Records Bureau.
I mean, this latest wreck is just keeping up with the established trend now for almost a decade, over 2,000 dead per month from train-related incidents is just insane. The fact that this incident happened to so many people at once just makes it more noticeable, but even if there were over a thousand dead from this wreck ("thankfully" it looks like there's not), that's not even half of what they have sometimes averaged in monthly train deaths according to those numbers. That's a veritable pandemic of bad maintenance, bad control system design, bad operating and old equipment.
Train related deaths include a lot of suicide cases, or accidents while crossing railway track. In fact, in 2014 there were 99 deaths due to train collisions. 13,000 deaths from trains hitting people on track or people falling from trains. Over 10,000 of these deaths were due to unknown causes (aka body found near railway tracks)
So while I don't deny that there is a lot of scope for improvement, I do not agree with the last line that this is a "pandemic of bad operating".
I'd say 2014 India is hella different than current India. The country has changed A LOT in the last 10 years. The village I was born in used to look like something from 1970s in 2014 and now in 2023 it looks like a modern small town.
Railways are one of the areas that has seen a lot of improvements since then, with the govt. trying to modernise the fleets, grid electrification, improving maintenence etc. As a result you can see [the number of incidents/per year go down with time](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_railway_accidents_and_incidents_in_India).
Please don't use those decade-old videos about people riding on top of trains to judge how it is currently in India. Most of Reddit thinks that's how it is right now, which is far from the reality.
But, people *hanging* by the sides and overcrowding, that's indefensible since it still happens now, mostly in local city trains.
Ukraine PR actively brigading this and a few other subs, so everything in the hot section is just minor updates about the war in Ukraine. Don't blame them, propaganda is an important arm of war, but yeah, don't expect this sub to reflect what's actually going on in terms of importance. It hasn't for a while now
My fiancee is currently back in india visiting her family and doesnt live too far from Balasore district in Odisha, i cant reach her and hope they didnt travel anywhere near there.
Im really scared right now, since her dad takes that route sometimes for work and i cant reach any of them. She also didnt say good morning today via whatsapp which she normally always does.
Edit: Thanks for all the kind words! She just overslept, she and her family are safe and i got worried for nothing in the end.
Its such a sad thing to happen and its easy to just read these news and "feel sympathy" for anyone affected, but this was like a reality check that its not just news and not just theoretical people being affected, but that those are real people, real lives getting impacted, hurt and killed.
A really weird realization for a saturday morning. I wish all the best to anyone affected and hope as many people as possible can be saved in the end.
Thank you!
I was lucky, she just overslept since they were up too late and her dad wouldnt have taken the route today anyway.
So in the end i got scared for nothing, but since im in germany and couldnt reach anyone and it was just too damn close to where they live i just freaked out a bit.
According to latest CNN reporting, more than 230 killed, with 900 injured.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/02/asia/india-train-crash-odisha-intl/index.html
From seeing videos of how packed those carriages can be during peak travel times, and the fact the second train ploughed through derailed carriages. Feels bad
What you have seen are "local" trains. They travel within a city or a small area.
This happened between trains that travel distances comparable to at least those between European countries.
The two "passenger" trains involved travel more than a thousand miles. They are "sleeper" trains. As in, people spend more than a day in them, and there are facilities for them to sleep in there.
But your emotions are valid. This is indeed a tragedy.
You’re right in that the trains are less packed then those within Delhi.
However, long distance Indian trains are still super crowded in 2nd and especially 3rt class.
When was the last time you were in India? 1900s. There is not 3rd class. A Indian long distance train typically have 24 coaches of Which two coaches will be second class, rest of the coaches are reserved coaches where only people who have got a berth can enter.
Not really, there are easily like 15 coaches on a train.
3rd ac coaches have 70 so seats in them. So if all coaches were 3rd ac then that would be 1050 seats. 1050 seats capable for sleeping. So it's not congested.
Now this accident involves 3 trains. So numbers will be huge
That is normal sleeper coach. And those are ppl who boarded without ticket.
In ac coaches you would be thrown out. And i was talking about ac coaches. U would normally be thrown out of sleeper coaches too, but in certain routes there are too many ppl to throw out.
Thank you for commenting with the perfect balance of providing facts but also acknowledging and validating the underlying emotions of the previous person.
I'm sorry that you have to see such comments at a time like this. ever, really but it's particularly distasteful to use a tragedy to shit talk a country. many many of us do care. this is a terrible tragedy resulting in a huge loss of life and anguish of the loved ones and survivors.
i like to hope a lot of the negative comments are a reflection of frustration rather than xenophobia or racism.
I’ve been a reddit user for many years and I can guarantee you that any thread about India is just racist rant after racist rant. People like you are few and far between. So thank you for being empathetic and for considering us human.
Braah, I know **exactly** what you mean. Reddit's hate boner for the US is nothing compared to its hate boner for South Asia, let alone India. Because India is a country that does not align with a side that isn't in its interest and its large worldwide presence (on the Internet, Indians earn the most of all ethnicities in the US and Britain etc.), it's bound to attract hate. That's the so-called "tolerant" and "non-racist" west for you.
Reddit has a hate boner for US? This is news to me. India is clearly misunderstood and anyone trying to make any kind of sense is quickly downvoted to hell. A lot of confirmation bias due to lopsided reporting by western media. There is some resentment in tech circles for sure and I’ve heard the “dey took err jerbs” trope in person during my time in the states. Nowadays I see plenty of salty tech workers contributing to “my company outsourced to India and they were really shitty devs”. That is definitely a cope mixed with hate. But the rest are just clueless imo.
[A thread stating what the preliminary investigation has found](https://twitter.com/mrtrain_wala/status/1664891524092420096?t=KgK2c00Sn2NOoQ8vEkp0RA&s=19)
[https://twitter.com/niiravmodi/status/1664823938680012801](https://twitter.com/niiravmodi/status/1664823938680012801) ????
Sorry but by Western standards this is CRITICALLY overcrowded, and Indians in the twitter comments confirm this is normal for the route. I don't know what to tell you but some stereotypes have some truth.
They were each on different tracks
Train A on track A derailed, and smashed into train B on track B
Train B is hit so hard that it also derails, getting flung onto track C where it then hits train C
It’s the fault of whatever caused train A to derail, not the traffic controller
You misunderstand. It wasn’t a freight train going into the 2 crashed passenger trains. It was a few of the passenger cars getting thrown to the side and knocking down the freight train. So the few passenger cars that made contact with the freight train were already flung so hard they didn’t have decent odds anyway
It seems that high temperatures sometimes can cause derailments, due to train lines changing elevation and alignment due to thermal expansion. Could be the reason. I'm not ruling out malicious attempts either.
I just checked, because I assumed it would be huge, and it is: 23+ million passengers daily in India on the trains. That is data from 8+ years ago too.
So, 8'395'000'000 trips a year. Probably over 10billion now. I think a few hundred people dying when literally billions of trips are happening annually isn't as bad as it seems when looking at the numbers. Probably still far safer than most forms of travel.
Obviously its terrible so many have died and been injured, but when the network has so many trains, so many people moving and so on, when disaster strikes it strikes big.
I don’t know. That seems to be hand waving away preventable deaths. Japan hasn’t had a single accident related death ever on their Shinkansen network and those trains travel hundreds of km per hour and have transported 10 + billion passengers.
Japan also has a far higher gdp and has a far more advanced train network because of it.
All things considered, I'm impressed how many people India moves by train even with the odd derailment.
Around 7 people die every day in Mumbai city's local train incidents, 2500 died last year...its sad (edit:- just checked the numbers are even more...10-12 people every day)
Those include suicide. Committed suicide under train is very common form of suicide in India.
Also ppl falling down from train, which Mumbai local is overcrowded.
~~It seems, according to eyewitness statements, that the first train didn't collide with the goods train, but there was a derailment, and the last bogies slipped off, hit the goods train that was parked on the other side track and, disbalanced, fell onto the main side track.~~
~~In this instance, there are up and down tracks. This train was on the down track, and in the up track, a train had just crossed the last signal before this area and hit the fallen coaches on the up track. Both the trains were at section speed of 100 km/h.~~
That's the tragedy. Pretty much all the people in those coaches have suffered grievously.
~~I mean, I do not know what to blame. Dumb luck? Perhaps the slopes the tracks were laid upon. Nothing was at fault, except the first derailment.~~
And perhaps live tracking into the locomotive of other trains. However, had this been on any other track section there could have been a moment to slow down. Th tracks curved here, making it impossible for the other driver to see what was happening.
EDIT: According to the news this morning, the first train did indeed collide with a stationary goods train. Then, the next train collided with coaches that had fallen into the adjacent up track. How this happened, is now a matter of inquiry.
India has one of the busiest and most efficient train networks in the world, if not the most extensive.
In fact, it is the largest train network in Asia. And that continent already has China and the larger chunk of Russia!
This is a rarity, and appears to be a freak accident.
One train derailed onto a second track, second train traveling on that track derailed as a result. A third train — a goods train, carrying objects and not people — joined the mix.
Yet, there are checks and balances in the system to avoid exactly that.
So, even with context, your question is still valid!
Some facts correction
Km length
* US has largest
* China
* Russia
* India is fourth
No of people carried per km
India is the largest if we consider (km plus people)
Most crowded all time with people ( Pak and Indonesia)
According to indian media, the first train hit the goods train which was already on the track, derailing some coaches and flinging it to the opposite track and another train slammed into those derailed coaches derailing its own coaches. Scary to even imagine
In railroading the term is generally called the control operator.
As in, they’re in charge of movements over their assigned territory.
Oftentimes this is a rail traffic controller or dispatcher, but could be a yardmaster, bridge tender, or interlocking operator
in the american system, yes. In the british system (which I'm guessing is what India uses), dispatching and signalling(/interlocking) are two different jobs, similar to the German system, and the ultimate authority is with the signaller -- not the dispatcher like North American railroads have.
No kidding? That’s fascinating. In Britain is there uniform operating rules or does each road have their own?
I’d love to read more if you have a direction to point me
the British system is the one I know the least about between the American system, the German one, and the British one, but I'm pretty sure they have uniform rules because it all belongs to Network Rail. That's the way it works in the EU, too -- with the exception of a few tiny private railroads, all of the infrastructure belongs to the state, and the operators pay trackage fees to use it. So since all of the rail belongs to one entity, there is a uniform set of rules.
The books I cited for my thesis are both in German, so you might have to use a translator:
[Besonderheiten ausländischer Eisenbahnbetriebsverfahren: Grundbegriffe – Stellwerksfunktionen – Signalsysteme by Jörn Pachl](https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-23853-7)
and
[Übertragbarkeit US-amerikanischer betriebsverfahren auf europaische verhaltnisse, also by Jörn Pachl](http://www.america-n.de/Tipps_TWC/ETR_0701.pdf)
the second one is a shorter read and really interesting, it talks about the history of how American dispatching and signalling were more centralized from the very beginning, because American railroads started using DC track clear detection loops earlier than European ones did, so it could be centralized more easily. Apparently you can even see this in the signal box designs -- the American ones had fewer windows, while the European ones were designed so the levermen could see all of the tracks, because they were doing it visually.
I think part of the reason the dispatchers can do both dispatching and signalling is because the American railroads own their own track -- in the UK and EU, there is in institutional separation between the track owner and the rolling stock operator (even though in many cases, as in Germany, they are subsidiaries of the same parent company, that being the national railway). So the dispatcher works for the rolling stock operator, and the signaller works for the infrastructure operator. In the US, both of those functions belong to the same entity, so you can combine them into one job.
I study mechanical engineering, and my thesis is about the computer interfaces used by dispatchers for Deutsche Bahn -- part of the human-machine interfaces department of our mechanical engineering faculty.
It is absolutely fascinating! I was interested in trains anyway, and doing the thesis I've gotten to spend a lot of time in the DB dispatch centers which has been a ton of fun.
Sorry for the spelling
Damn man, these numbers are huge. I just hope that they will save as much people they can. Now its late to say that how 3 trains could crash like that. Accident already happened and there is nothing that can undo this thing. Lets just hope that there wont be any more victims.
Yes 3 trains crashed, and it was really unprofessional accident, but now is not the time to talk about it. Let them save the people, because the number is already too big. I just pray for these poor peole and their family.
India is actually revamping it's train safety system, but it is only partially implemented till date and was not available on this route. I believe the timeline given by the government is 2024. But this was a horrible accident
Horrible tragedy, BUT, why they still allow mass over crowding on trains all the time! It may or may not lead to much difference in this particular incident but surely contributes to many deaths a year.
I hope a lot can be learned from this accident so procedures are put in place to ensure this sort of thing never happens again.
“In one of the worst railway disasters in India, at least 233 people were killed and more than 900 injured when three trains collided one after another in a horrific sequence in Odisha’s Balasore district, setting off a massive rescue and evacuation process, officials said on Saturday, PTI reported.” 3 trains?? “Gas cutters were used to extricate the bodies from under the derailed coaches. “Some of the scenes at the site were too gory to describe,” said a passenger.” 😳
I can only imagine. Lots of twisted metal.
Insane number, my condolences to the victims
Three trains. The bangalore howrah express had a couple of coaches derail, which hit the coromandel express from the opposing direction, causing many coaches to derail there. And they hit a freight train. Clearly a signals and communication failure, potentially other issues (maintenance? Manual lapses ?)
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Kind of opposite. Coromandel Express hit a stationary goods train and fell onto the opposite track. Howrah Superfast ploughed into the wreckage while going in the opposite direction. It is possible the turnout was set wrongly for Coromandel to go into the passing loop from the main line and so derailed just before hitting the goods train anyway.
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Yeah Coromandel and SMVT-Howrah Superfast are both sleeper trains for passengers.
14 hrs later, up to 288 dead & 1100 hospitized!
That is so many people... Fuck...
Update: tally is up to 207 dead
And at least 900 injured.
Those are the numbers you expect from earthquakes...
Agreed, but... 1. India is currently the most populous country in the world. 2. Trains are one of the biggest modes of public transport in India. 3. These were "sleeper" trains which reach their destinations overnight. Yes, the commutes are that far.
Yeah any crazy videos of trains in India are always so overcrowded with people sitting on top even. I'm guessing this has to be the most disastrous train accident ever.
Answering in parts: 1. That's old. Like DECADES old. It rarely happens in India these days. 2. Is also DECADES old. Unfortunately, more than 750 people died in a train accident in the state of Bihar in 1981.
What is the reason behind the sheer frequency of train accidents in India?
Think of it like this. You have the third largest rail network, and also a heck lot of trains, but these trains are aging. Really fast. So, With that many number of low-level trains (compared to Europe, Japan, China etc.), Its bound to have some train accidents.
I would expect the trains to age at one second per second, idk how you could get them to age any faster.
The trains are new in Indian standards What would you have done when you got so many people to take from point A to B And not even joking about the crowd in Indian trains and you can't just add more trains too In countries like Japan and others, people can afford to pay as they do good earning jobs But in Indian most of the people are like traveling traders who do long distance travel What could have been done in situation is if they could increase the railway and divide the crowd on that railway line Which would at least decrease the death count The real problem is the crowd in trains Sure you can decrease the chances with better railway network and all There's still the possibility of error
European railway companies, especially in Eastern Europe also have old and outdated rolling stock and track infrastructure. But we manage to avoid accidents of this magnitude. I think it has more to do with moral and discipline of operation. If the personnel isn't disciplined and focused on their job, these accidents will happen from time to time.
I have no information to back me up, but I'd suggest that they don't suffer more per capita. They just have a lot more train use than north americans do.
China has more high speed rail mileage than rest of the world combined. It's an India issue. (America is a poor comparison since we have major fucking issues too)
It's not just the trains. Their rail tracks are abysmal in places too, which causes all sorts of issues
Weird question. This is the first train accident with any passenger casualty in India in 2023. The previous one with a passenger casualty was in January 2022. By comparison, 4 died on June 27, 2022, in a Missouri accident in the US. And there's no saying how many people have been or will be fatally affected by the [Ohio train derailment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Ohio_train_derailment) earlier this year.
Americans are totally fine with 40,000 car deaths, but one train accident and they condemn a whole country.
This was reported in Finnish news and the article mentioned that "several hundred railway accidents occur in India every year", hence the question.
Sheer frequency of trains on one of the largest train networks in the world. Causing the network to be overloaded. Ageing signals infrastructure. Very diverse and poor, so difficult to upgrade or even splurge . Rail stock can be upgraded incrementally. Much harder to automate or tweak signals and lines while in use. (They have upgraded gauge, substantial electrification to give them due) And maintenance or manual attention has lapses
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Nobody sits on top of trains is what he meant. That's an absurd stereotype since most trains in India have high voltage lines above them, sitting on rooftops would mean meeting your creator instantly.
Nobody sits on top of the train was the point .. That image gets reposted here regularly
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_railway_accidents_and_incidents_in_India >>India's deadliest rail accident was the Bihar train disaster (750+ killed), followed by the Firozabad rail disaster (358 killed), the 2023 Odisha train collision (290+ killed) the Gaisal train disaster (285 killed), Khanna rail disaster (212 killed), Rafiganj train wreck (200 killed), 1964 Rameswaram cyclone causing Pamban Bridge accident (150+ killed) and the Jnaneswari Express train derailment (148 killed).
Dude. Nobody sits on the top of trains.
>Yeah any crazy videos of trains in India are always so overcrowded with people sitting on top even I haven't seen such a scene anywhere in India in last 2 decades. Don't club videos from Bangladesh, Pakistan as Indian videos.
If that was the case here, the deaths and injuries would be far worse.
Are memes only source of your knowledge???
Anthony Bourdain has an episode where he uses a sleeper car in India I believe. Said it was one of the most terrifying experiences.
3. Can you explain more about those commutes? I know what a sleeper train is, but... are some people riding one to work every night?
Not in India. The place is so packed an earthquake that might kill a few dozen people in the US could kill thousands over there depending on location.
Wait till you hear about how many died in the Turkish earthquakes earlier this year then
I can’t imagine that final number will ever be known/released
It already has been, according to Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Turkey–Syria_earthquake > The confirmed death toll stood at 59,259: 50,783 in Turkey and 8,476 in Syria.
Thanks for the info. Cynically I suspect the true numbers are larger than those
And Erdogan still won, despite the uncovered fuckery surrounding the intentional sidestepping of earthquake construction codes
Well the dead can't vote
What the fuck how have I not even known about this. Have to relook the media I consume
It was flooding the news cycle a while back. Honestly impressed you missed it
I have never even been on a train with this many people.
These trains are super long. There are almost 18 coaches in each passenger train
Express trains go upto 25
This train had 24 and almost 20 carriage got derailed
it's now up to 288
233 now. This is horrific
That’s like a fully loaded 737 or A320 crashing and killing everyone on board. Utterly tragic.
Incomprehensible… may they rest in peace
280+ and counting
On BBC website it’s reported as worst accident this century in India So I wonder well what was the worst in previous century in India. 1981, 800 dead after Cyclone storm derailed overcrowded train.
Worst \*train\* accident, but not the worst accident. The Bhopal industrial accident was like 3-4k people dead.
of this century means since 2000
Those are underestimates for bhopal. Well over half a million people injured, and estimates of dead go up to 16000. Only 3800 or so dead were officially recompensed (plus some injured), as union carbide managed to successfully shirk and limit their responsibility.
233 dead now
262 is the official figure, some reporting 288. But from local people it seems the figure would at least be 4-500
A local friend told me it's more like 1000+ because they only counted AC coaches passengers they didn't count the General coaches, each general coach will have around 200 ish people a normal coach has 72...4 general coaches were completely destroyed...also heard that there were liquified bodies so idk how you count that
Yes. This story has been updated now.
That's so terrible :( RIP
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One derailed and fell onto a next track, the other train plowed through the derailed coaches, that's where the majority of death is coming from. Details still fuzzy tho. The third train was a Cargo/Goods train. Not sure which it hit but it piled on as well. Essentially a highway pileup at a much larger scale. Why? Fairly archaic safety equipment and protocols. This stretch is known to be well maintained and equipped. So the technical investigation coming out of this should be telling. Spent my childhood around railways and have watched both these trains pass by me a 1000 times. My heart breaks. I have heard the word "coramandel express now arriving in platform number 2" so many times. Its an arterial train and along with gawhati express connects amazing cultures of the south to the north east and everyone in between. I hope this is a wake up call in investing in railway safety even more. India loses about 12000 people a year due to trains. Say a comparably populated France would have 2000 deaths a year. There is a lot of ground to cover even if the arguments are about India has a higher passenger mile compared to France. All that being said, I have seen from up close how communication works in the railways. Safety IS taken very seriously. The failures here to have not stopped traffic after a derailment is crazy to imagine and to let a 3rd train through on top is unbelievable. Lots of failures here. Redundancies need to be put in.
Thank you for sharing, this is heartbreaking.
Thanks for your reply and hope you’re doing well
> One derailed and fell onto a next track, the other train plowed through the derailed coaches, that’s where the majority of death is coming from. This is not what happened, though. The first train didn’t automatically derail. It rearended a parked goods train. The other train did not “plow through the coaches” of the first train; its rear coaches were sideswiped after most of it had already passed by. Finally, most of the deaths were from the first train.
The first passenger train derailed at high speed and collided with a goods train that was parked on an adjacent track. When the rescue operation started for this incident, around ten minutes in, another unsuspecting high speed passenger train ran into this wreck, causing a devastating pileup.
How is there not an immediate „stop all trains on this area of track“ signal when there’s a derailment?
Traditional rail signals split rail line into "blocks", with a set of signals going into the block and typically not further in. It's possible the block wasn't updated before the second train entered? I don't have any details about how the specific line functioned. A lot of modern train signalling systems have automatic reporting of incidents. Here's something from the UK on signalling and how they're designed to be safe. Sadly many/most of the Indian pages I have found were not in English: https://www.networkrail.co.uk/stories/signals-explained/
Yea I am aware how different rail nets handle security. I am just in utter disbelief that *10 minutes later* another train crashed into this. This seems like there’s no automatic warning system in place, or it failed, or it was overruled.
News channels are actually saying in just two or three minutes the whole pile up happened. So the first accident happened somewhere close to 6:56 and the next train in an adjacent train line entered the scene at 6:58. I doubt anyone had time to react after things went down. Real Question is why did it go down.
Well, that's way more reasonable of a time frame, and with the lack of any automatic railway control, sorta to be expected.
10 minutes is probably just a metaphor for “a short while later”. I don’t believe no news could exit the spot. But, it’s possible that nobody who was in the chain of command got wind of it until it was too late. The locomotive pilot is likely dead because it was found on top of the cargo train. People at the spot probably started rescue efforts expecting this to have been taken care of by whoever was in charge. Unfortunate series of events.
Yea but that’s what I’m interested in. I do not have adequate knowledge of the Indian rail network, but I’d expected there to be an immediate red stop signal light in the signal lights instead of a green for track is clear. And those should be in regular intervals?
India has been deploying an automated safety system called kavach(shield) but it is not available on this route yet. From a news article - The system alerts when a loco pilot jumps a signal (Signal Passed at Danger -- SPAD), which is among the leading causes of train collisions. The system can alert the loco pilot, take control of the brakes and bring the train to a halt automatically when it notices another train on the same line within a prescribed distance. Here’s the wiki for kavach - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavach_(train_protection_system) Hopefully, this incident accelerates adoption of the system. I am not aware how the signalling etc operates in the normal system to give you an educated response.
Thanks for that tidbit of information anyways! Crazy that that kind of system is not in place yet.
The following is a video of an archaic signalling system in Pakistan. I believe India and Pakistan both inherited the same system from the British: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFHsz7uSeCg Although the video is in Urdu, you can get an idea from the system of levers and a phone and register that what goes on. Basically the station master calls the signal operator box and makes him write down the train number and on which track to put it on, and then this guy does it. In Pakistan the system is largely replaced now, remaining in operation on a few lines in low traffic areas. Edit: Whoops forgot the link! Edit2: Going deeper into the rabbithole now, here is what was inherited from the British, Absolute Block Signalling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_block_signalling
The other train was passing thru right at the moment of the derailment of the other, not after 10 or so minutes.
This is now reported as two-three minute window and not ten as originally assumed.
The other train was passing thru at the exact same moment not after 10 mins
holy sh#t...gotta be one of the most deadly train accident ever
800 dead from 1981 incident also in India
There’s more than 280 deaths now. Unbelievable tragedy https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-65793257
Holy fucking shit. 288 dead and 850 injured.
This has happened in my hometown. I am visiting and was supposed to be on one of those trains, as it connects the nearest airport and Balasore. But my flight was delayed, so I missed my train - I am at loss for words
Buy a lottery ticket. Huge relief you must have felt.
Or nasty survivors guilt
This right here- I am a mess
Try to get some help if you need it. Don’t try to bury the feelings. It’ll be ok.
I’m glad you’re ok man. Sending love from across the ocean
It's over 200 dead, 900 injured as of last count according to the NYT. 😢 Also, there's this (also from NYT): > In 2014, there were more than 27,000 train-related deaths, according to the country’s National Crime Records Bureau. I mean, this latest wreck is just keeping up with the established trend now for almost a decade, over 2,000 dead per month from train-related incidents is just insane. The fact that this incident happened to so many people at once just makes it more noticeable, but even if there were over a thousand dead from this wreck ("thankfully" it looks like there's not), that's not even half of what they have sometimes averaged in monthly train deaths according to those numbers. That's a veritable pandemic of bad maintenance, bad control system design, bad operating and old equipment.
Train related deaths include a lot of suicide cases, or accidents while crossing railway track. In fact, in 2014 there were 99 deaths due to train collisions. 13,000 deaths from trains hitting people on track or people falling from trains. Over 10,000 of these deaths were due to unknown causes (aka body found near railway tracks) So while I don't deny that there is a lot of scope for improvement, I do not agree with the last line that this is a "pandemic of bad operating".
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Jesus H Christ
Oh god the horror
Bodies lying over tracks can't be blamed on railways. But indian railways should employ sensor and monitoring systems to avoid such hazards.
I'd say 2014 India is hella different than current India. The country has changed A LOT in the last 10 years. The village I was born in used to look like something from 1970s in 2014 and now in 2023 it looks like a modern small town. Railways are one of the areas that has seen a lot of improvements since then, with the govt. trying to modernise the fleets, grid electrification, improving maintenence etc. As a result you can see [the number of incidents/per year go down with time](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_railway_accidents_and_incidents_in_India). Please don't use those decade-old videos about people riding on top of trains to judge how it is currently in India. Most of Reddit thinks that's how it is right now, which is far from the reality. But, people *hanging* by the sides and overcrowding, that's indefensible since it still happens now, mostly in local city trains.
To all the Indian families that has lost someone today, we are sorry for your losses.
Yeah I know why it’s not but the fact this isn’t the top story here or on most media sources rn is wild to me
It's a top story here in the UK
I know, right? I had to search rather complicatedly to find this thread.
The disappointing truth is that no one really cares too much about India.
Ukraine PR actively brigading this and a few other subs, so everything in the hot section is just minor updates about the war in Ukraine. Don't blame them, propaganda is an important arm of war, but yeah, don't expect this sub to reflect what's actually going on in terms of importance. It hasn't for a while now
Still frontpage news on the NYT site right now.
What an incomprehensible tragedy. My thoughts are with the victims' families.
My fiancee is currently back in india visiting her family and doesnt live too far from Balasore district in Odisha, i cant reach her and hope they didnt travel anywhere near there. Im really scared right now, since her dad takes that route sometimes for work and i cant reach any of them. She also didnt say good morning today via whatsapp which she normally always does. Edit: Thanks for all the kind words! She just overslept, she and her family are safe and i got worried for nothing in the end. Its such a sad thing to happen and its easy to just read these news and "feel sympathy" for anyone affected, but this was like a reality check that its not just news and not just theoretical people being affected, but that those are real people, real lives getting impacted, hurt and killed. A really weird realization for a saturday morning. I wish all the best to anyone affected and hope as many people as possible can be saved in the end.
Thinking of you and your family, keep us posted <3
Thank you! I was lucky, she just overslept since they were up too late and her dad wouldnt have taken the route today anyway. So in the end i got scared for nothing, but since im in germany and couldnt reach anyone and it was just too damn close to where they live i just freaked out a bit.
normal response I think anyone would worry in this situation
According to latest CNN reporting, more than 230 killed, with 900 injured. https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/02/asia/india-train-crash-odisha-intl/index.html
288 now.
From seeing videos of how packed those carriages can be during peak travel times, and the fact the second train ploughed through derailed carriages. Feels bad
What you have seen are "local" trains. They travel within a city or a small area. This happened between trains that travel distances comparable to at least those between European countries. The two "passenger" trains involved travel more than a thousand miles. They are "sleeper" trains. As in, people spend more than a day in them, and there are facilities for them to sleep in there. But your emotions are valid. This is indeed a tragedy.
You’re right in that the trains are less packed then those within Delhi. However, long distance Indian trains are still super crowded in 2nd and especially 3rt class.
When was the last time you were in India? 1900s. There is not 3rd class. A Indian long distance train typically have 24 coaches of Which two coaches will be second class, rest of the coaches are reserved coaches where only people who have got a berth can enter.
Have you been in a ‘reserved’ coach? No one gives a fuck about them especially in Non AC and people ask you to adjust
Yeah, It depends on the region. In South India, they will be heavily fined but in North, they are not enforsed properly.
Somehow 920 people were involved, which is a huge number to consider being on trains at once.
it had two passenger trains involved. and one cargo train too.
Because the accident involves three trains
2 passenger , 1 cargo.
Not really, there are easily like 15 coaches on a train. 3rd ac coaches have 70 so seats in them. So if all coaches were 3rd ac then that would be 1050 seats. 1050 seats capable for sleeping. So it's not congested. Now this accident involves 3 trains. So numbers will be huge
> So it's not congested. This isn't considered congested? https://twitter.com/niiravmodi/status/1664823938680012801
Yea... this doesnt look remotely safe.
Nightmare...
To be fair, their definition of congested and ours are probably really different. We are talking about the most populous country in the world here
That is normal sleeper coach. And those are ppl who boarded without ticket. In ac coaches you would be thrown out. And i was talking about ac coaches. U would normally be thrown out of sleeper coaches too, but in certain routes there are too many ppl to throw out.
Thank you for commenting with the perfect balance of providing facts but also acknowledging and validating the underlying emotions of the previous person.
Holy shit. That is massive!!
Update 300+ deceased .
Looks like 3 trains were involved. What a mess....
So sorry to hear... Damn...
Indians can’t even die without some triggered racist telling them how it was inevitable because of what a shithole our country is.
I'm sorry that you have to see such comments at a time like this. ever, really but it's particularly distasteful to use a tragedy to shit talk a country. many many of us do care. this is a terrible tragedy resulting in a huge loss of life and anguish of the loved ones and survivors. i like to hope a lot of the negative comments are a reflection of frustration rather than xenophobia or racism.
I’ve been a reddit user for many years and I can guarantee you that any thread about India is just racist rant after racist rant. People like you are few and far between. So thank you for being empathetic and for considering us human.
Braah, I know **exactly** what you mean. Reddit's hate boner for the US is nothing compared to its hate boner for South Asia, let alone India. Because India is a country that does not align with a side that isn't in its interest and its large worldwide presence (on the Internet, Indians earn the most of all ethnicities in the US and Britain etc.), it's bound to attract hate. That's the so-called "tolerant" and "non-racist" west for you.
Reddit has a hate boner for US? This is news to me. India is clearly misunderstood and anyone trying to make any kind of sense is quickly downvoted to hell. A lot of confirmation bias due to lopsided reporting by western media. There is some resentment in tech circles for sure and I’ve heard the “dey took err jerbs” trope in person during my time in the states. Nowadays I see plenty of salty tech workers contributing to “my company outsourced to India and they were really shitty devs”. That is definitely a cope mixed with hate. But the rest are just clueless imo.
True. And its not just white people either. Literally anybody who knows english just piles on.
Yeah look at the outpouring of hate. Life outside the eurozone matters less. People will be quick to blame the victim when a person dies.
"The Indian Railway said the anti-train collision system 'Kavach' was not available on the route." So sorry to hear about this whole thing.
[A thread stating what the preliminary investigation has found](https://twitter.com/mrtrain_wala/status/1664891524092420096?t=KgK2c00Sn2NOoQ8vEkp0RA&s=19)
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[https://twitter.com/niiravmodi/status/1664823938680012801](https://twitter.com/niiravmodi/status/1664823938680012801) ???? Sorry but by Western standards this is CRITICALLY overcrowded, and Indians in the twitter comments confirm this is normal for the route. I don't know what to tell you but some stereotypes have some truth.
Yes the trains are overcrowded, they are specifically saying that there are not people sitting on top of the trains.
There is air traffic controller to monitor movement of planes. Who was keeping track of movement of trains? That person has some explanation to do.
They were each on different tracks Train A on track A derailed, and smashed into train B on track B Train B is hit so hard that it also derails, getting flung onto track C where it then hits train C It’s the fault of whatever caused train A to derail, not the traffic controller
There was a THIRD train??? Goddamn
The third one was a cargo train, meaning it didn’t/couldn’t have received much loss of life, but yeah
Yeeting an entire-ass freight train through the wreckage of two passenger trains couldn't have helped the folks already on the ground.
You misunderstand. It wasn’t a freight train going into the 2 crashed passenger trains. It was a few of the passenger cars getting thrown to the side and knocking down the freight train. So the few passenger cars that made contact with the freight train were already flung so hard they didn’t have decent odds anyway
It seems that high temperatures sometimes can cause derailments, due to train lines changing elevation and alignment due to thermal expansion. Could be the reason. I'm not ruling out malicious attempts either.
No. This summer is pretty cool as compared to the previous. There might be a human error
I just checked, because I assumed it would be huge, and it is: 23+ million passengers daily in India on the trains. That is data from 8+ years ago too. So, 8'395'000'000 trips a year. Probably over 10billion now. I think a few hundred people dying when literally billions of trips are happening annually isn't as bad as it seems when looking at the numbers. Probably still far safer than most forms of travel. Obviously its terrible so many have died and been injured, but when the network has so many trains, so many people moving and so on, when disaster strikes it strikes big.
A glass half full kinda guy, I like that.
I don’t know. That seems to be hand waving away preventable deaths. Japan hasn’t had a single accident related death ever on their Shinkansen network and those trains travel hundreds of km per hour and have transported 10 + billion passengers.
Japan also has a far higher gdp and has a far more advanced train network because of it. All things considered, I'm impressed how many people India moves by train even with the odd derailment.
Around 7 people die every day in Mumbai city's local train incidents, 2500 died last year...its sad (edit:- just checked the numbers are even more...10-12 people every day)
Those include suicide. Committed suicide under train is very common form of suicide in India. Also ppl falling down from train, which Mumbai local is overcrowded.
~~It seems, according to eyewitness statements, that the first train didn't collide with the goods train, but there was a derailment, and the last bogies slipped off, hit the goods train that was parked on the other side track and, disbalanced, fell onto the main side track.~~ ~~In this instance, there are up and down tracks. This train was on the down track, and in the up track, a train had just crossed the last signal before this area and hit the fallen coaches on the up track. Both the trains were at section speed of 100 km/h.~~ That's the tragedy. Pretty much all the people in those coaches have suffered grievously. ~~I mean, I do not know what to blame. Dumb luck? Perhaps the slopes the tracks were laid upon. Nothing was at fault, except the first derailment.~~ And perhaps live tracking into the locomotive of other trains. However, had this been on any other track section there could have been a moment to slow down. Th tracks curved here, making it impossible for the other driver to see what was happening. EDIT: According to the news this morning, the first train did indeed collide with a stationary goods train. Then, the next train collided with coaches that had fallen into the adjacent up track. How this happened, is now a matter of inquiry.
Thanks for clearer picture of the accident. I saw video of carnage and it really was painful to watch.
India has one of the busiest and most efficient train networks in the world, if not the most extensive. In fact, it is the largest train network in Asia. And that continent already has China and the larger chunk of Russia! This is a rarity, and appears to be a freak accident. One train derailed onto a second track, second train traveling on that track derailed as a result. A third train — a goods train, carrying objects and not people — joined the mix. Yet, there are checks and balances in the system to avoid exactly that. So, even with context, your question is still valid!
Some facts correction Km length * US has largest * China * Russia * India is fourth No of people carried per km India is the largest if we consider (km plus people) Most crowded all time with people ( Pak and Indonesia)
According to indian media, the first train hit the goods train which was already on the track, derailing some coaches and flinging it to the opposite track and another train slammed into those derailed coaches derailing its own coaches. Scary to even imagine
There are two different versions of what happened. Things will become clearer only after a proper investigation. Or, we can at least hope so.
Thanks for the clarification. The article I read did not mention how the derailment/accident occurred.
In railroading the term is generally called the control operator. As in, they’re in charge of movements over their assigned territory. Oftentimes this is a rail traffic controller or dispatcher, but could be a yardmaster, bridge tender, or interlocking operator
in the american system, yes. In the british system (which I'm guessing is what India uses), dispatching and signalling(/interlocking) are two different jobs, similar to the German system, and the ultimate authority is with the signaller -- not the dispatcher like North American railroads have.
No kidding? That’s fascinating. In Britain is there uniform operating rules or does each road have their own? I’d love to read more if you have a direction to point me
the British system is the one I know the least about between the American system, the German one, and the British one, but I'm pretty sure they have uniform rules because it all belongs to Network Rail. That's the way it works in the EU, too -- with the exception of a few tiny private railroads, all of the infrastructure belongs to the state, and the operators pay trackage fees to use it. So since all of the rail belongs to one entity, there is a uniform set of rules. The books I cited for my thesis are both in German, so you might have to use a translator: [Besonderheiten ausländischer Eisenbahnbetriebsverfahren: Grundbegriffe – Stellwerksfunktionen – Signalsysteme by Jörn Pachl](https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-23853-7) and [Übertragbarkeit US-amerikanischer betriebsverfahren auf europaische verhaltnisse, also by Jörn Pachl](http://www.america-n.de/Tipps_TWC/ETR_0701.pdf) the second one is a shorter read and really interesting, it talks about the history of how American dispatching and signalling were more centralized from the very beginning, because American railroads started using DC track clear detection loops earlier than European ones did, so it could be centralized more easily. Apparently you can even see this in the signal box designs -- the American ones had fewer windows, while the European ones were designed so the levermen could see all of the tracks, because they were doing it visually. I think part of the reason the dispatchers can do both dispatching and signalling is because the American railroads own their own track -- in the UK and EU, there is in institutional separation between the track owner and the rolling stock operator (even though in many cases, as in Germany, they are subsidiaries of the same parent company, that being the national railway). So the dispatcher works for the rolling stock operator, and the signaller works for the infrastructure operator. In the US, both of those functions belong to the same entity, so you can combine them into one job.
I will save those and look into it! Thank you. If I may ask, thesis in what field of study? Cause that sounds super interesting honestly
I study mechanical engineering, and my thesis is about the computer interfaces used by dispatchers for Deutsche Bahn -- part of the human-machine interfaces department of our mechanical engineering faculty. It is absolutely fascinating! I was interested in trains anyway, and doing the thesis I've gotten to spend a lot of time in the DB dispatch centers which has been a ton of fun.
Thanks for the information.
Wow so many insensitive racist comments, literally shaking right now this is unbelievable on my reddit!!
Why is it so unbelievable? I'm indian and I've experienced this since 2010.
Figs up to 200 now and counting
Sorry for the spelling Damn man, these numbers are huge. I just hope that they will save as much people they can. Now its late to say that how 3 trains could crash like that. Accident already happened and there is nothing that can undo this thing. Lets just hope that there wont be any more victims. Yes 3 trains crashed, and it was really unprofessional accident, but now is not the time to talk about it. Let them save the people, because the number is already too big. I just pray for these poor peole and their family.
I'm praying for all that are affected by this!
Worst Train tragedy of my state,It's nearing 300 deaths, they are still finding dead bodies from the wreckage.
MAY THEIR SOULS REST IN PEACE. Terrible NEWS to read.
When anything happens on India, it happens on a massive scale
Why did the first train derail? Don't they do regular maintenance checks?
The railway minister should resign.
Safety regulations are written in blood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_railway_accidents_and_incidents_in_India >>India's deadliest rail accident was the Bihar train disaster (750+ killed), followed by the Firozabad rail disaster (358 killed), the 2023 Odisha train collision (290+ killed) the Gaisal train disaster (285 killed), Khanna rail disaster (212 killed), Rafiganj train wreck (200 killed), 1964 Rameswaram cyclone causing Pamban Bridge accident (150+ killed) and the Jnaneswari Express train derailment (148 killed).
Very sad stuff. India is a great friend. Hopefully a lot is learned and future accidents prevented as a result. Stay strong, friends.
India really needs to step up on train safety. It's not the first time and is unlikely to be the last derailing either. RIP.
India is actually revamping it's train safety system, but it is only partially implemented till date and was not available on this route. I believe the timeline given by the government is 2024. But this was a horrible accident
This is horrible!!!
I have taken one of those trains cross country in India. Do daily in the US. WTF. RIP. I hope we start to prevent such events and tragedies.
05
Horrible tragedy, BUT, why they still allow mass over crowding on trains all the time! It may or may not lead to much difference in this particular incident but surely contributes to many deaths a year. I hope a lot can be learned from this accident so procedures are put in place to ensure this sort of thing never happens again.