Railways to launch a massive maintenance program

A massive Maintenance work program has been announced by the Railway board and the zonal railways have been directed to implement them during the next Six months in the wake of the deadly Rail accident in Odisha involving the Chennai bound Coromandel express last week.

Rolling block program will be made for this period which will have daily schedule of works required to be done in a block. This program should be reviewed every week. The zonal railways have been asked not to undertake maintenance work without railway blocks. Corridor blocks for maintenance should be planned by all zonal railways. Blocks and disconnections are important but uncertainty to the travelling public have to be done away with. All such blocks should be planned in advance.

The meeting also issued instruction to prepare for the upcoming monsoon seasons for possible flooding of railway tracks and obstructions caused by landslides in all the vulnerable locations

The zones have been instructed to review the maintenance of wagons, coaches, operations, crew and all aspects related to safety thoroughly.  Zonal officials should resolve all deficiencies noted during these inspections on an urgent basis

Officials have been asked to plan all signaling related work and club them, especially signaling and telecommunication (S&T), and ensure safety. The emphasis in the meeting was on the culture of safety and that any unsafe practice should be done away with. All the near misses leading to possible accidents were also asked to be taken up seriously

The Railway board held its first high-level meeting after last week’s triple-train accident in Odisha’s Balasore after railway minister returned to the capital on June 7th after overseeing the rescue operations and restoration of tracks at the accident spot in Odisha’s Balasore district.