Kanchanjunga Express accident after-effect: Railway Board releases Unified Subsidiary Rules for all zones

NEW DELHI: The Railway Board has released "Unified Subsidiary Rules" for all 17 railway zones across the country to provide instructions to station masters, loco pilots and train managers for the working of trains during a failure of the automatic signalling system.

The rules were released on August 16.

The Railway Board had initiated the process of unifying the subsidiary rules after the Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS) submitted its report in a case in which a goods train rammed into the stationary Kanchanjunga Express train from behind in West Bengal's Darjeeling district on June 17, killing 10 people, including the loco pilot of the goods train.

The CRS report submitted to the board on July 11 highlighted the need to bring uniformity in the subsidiary rules of various railway zones as those varied from zone to zone, causing uncertainty and obstacles to safe train operations. The CRS also considered these variations as one of the causes of the accident.

"The Railway Board issued General Rules, which are like a broad framework of instructions for safe train operations to zones. Based on these GRs, the zones developed their own subsidiary rules (SRs) that vary in some cases, leading to confusion and a threat to safe train operations," a railway safety official said.

In its recommendations, the CRS said, "The GR was issued by the Railway Board in the year 1976, since then a lot of changes have taken place in the GR. There is a need to revise and re-issue the GR. Further, the corresponding SR is varying across the zonal railways. There is a need to bring uniformity in the SR of the zonal railways by the Railway Board to the maximum extent possible."

After the CRS report, the board set up a four-member committee to look into these variations in case of working of trains during a signal failure and come up with unified SRs applicable to all zones.

The rule in question before the committee was General Rule 9.12, which talks about the train-operating procedure during a failure of the automatic signalling system.

"While preparing the report, the main objective of the committee was to provide clear instructions to station masters, loco pilots and train managers for the working of trains during a failure of automatic signalling and to minimise the number of paper authorities to be issued to loco pilots and train managers during such failures," the committee said in the "Instructions pertaining to Unified Subsidiary Rules under GR 9.12".

One of the recommendations of the committee is that if signals between two stations are defective, the loco pilot will have to stop the train at each defective signal for a minute during the day and for two minutes during the night, before proceeding further with great caution.

The committee has authorised the senior divisional operations manager (Sr DOM) or the DOM (in-charge) of a rail division to take a decision regarding what a prolonged signal failure would mean.

"There was a confusion earlier regarding the duration of a signal failure as the General Rules only talked about what to do in case of a short-time failure or a prolonged failure, without specifying the duration of short time or prolonged. Now, the committee has authorised the Sr DOM or DOM (in-charge) to take a call," the official said.

"It was very important to clarify because train operation procedures are different in case of a short-time failure and a prolonged failure," he added.

In another important decision, the committee has reframed the various paper authority letters, such as T/A 912, T/D 912, T/B 912, T/C 912, T/B 602 and T/510, which are issued to the train crew to cross defective signals in different conditions.

"The CRS, during its investigation, found out that the loco pilot of the goods train was issued a paper authority -- T/A 912 -- to cross the defective signal. However, there was no speed restriction mentioned on it. The committee has rectified these shortcomings by simplifying the rules," the official said.

The four-member committee, in its recommendations, said, "Different procedures are being followed in various zonal railways for temporary single-line working in Automatic Block Signalling territories. To standardise the various procedures being followed, a new form -- T/E-912 -- has been introduced.

According to the committee, T/E 912 is an authority letter to be issued to the train crew for working on a single line in a double-line territory in case of automatic signal failure.