A passenger train in India rolled away from a station without a locomotive, but with hundreds of passengers inside. The runaway train was caught by a lucky chance after several stations, reports our own correspondent Travel.ru.
The incident occurred at the end of last week. The Ahmedabad-Puri Express was nearing the end of its cross-country journey when a locomotive change was taking place at one of the stations. However, the railway workers forgot to apply the brakes on the passenger coaches, and with one locomotive uncoupled and the other still attached, the train began to move.
The train rolled in the opposite direction, gradually accelerating. However, a derailment was avoided - the dispatchers quickly got their bearings and removed other trains from the runaway train's path. Having traveled over ten kilometers and passed two stations, the train slowed down, as the track went uphill. At low speed, the conductors managed to activate the brake and stop the train. As a result, it arrived at its destination about two hours late.
Tourists traveling to India should be aware of the extremely poor safety standards on the country's railways (as well as on its roads). The reason for this is the widespread disregard for safety precautions and the outdated infrastructure and rolling stock. Several major train crashes or collisions occur each year.
In the described case, even after the incident, the railway workers were unable to name the exact number of passengers on the train that rolled away - according to the main version, there were about a thousand, according to other sources, a little more than five hundred. So far, the consequences of the incident have been the removal of seven employees responsible for the incident and the announcement of another "safety month".
Source: travel.ru