New Delhi: An attempt was made to derail the Dehradun Express by reportedly putting an old iron telecom pole on the railway track near Rampur in Uttar Pradesh. However, an alert and quick-thinking train driver applied brakes in time and prevented a major accident.
Sources said an old iron telecom pole was placed on the railway track located behind a colony near the UP-Uttarakhand border in Rampur. The Dehradun Express (train number 12091) was passing from there around 11pm on Wednesday, when the locomotive pilot of the train spotted the pole, applied emergency brakes and prevented a possible derailment.
On receiving information about a pole being found on the track, GRP and police administration officers swung into action and reached the spot. The pole was immediately removed from the track.
According to sources, the incident occurred on Wednesday night on the railway line at kilometer 43/10-11 of Bilaspur Road, passing behind Balwant Enclave Colony in Rudrapur.
After the incident unfolded, the SP arrived at the scene to conduct inspection. The GRP, RPF, and local police also reached the spot. The team took possession of the pole and started a search operation the same night. GRP captain from Moradabad Vidya Sagar Mishra also reached the incident site.
On Thursday morning, a team of officials carried out another round of inspection at the site. They gathered information from the people nearby. It came to the fore that some miscreants consume drugs on the railway line that passes behind the colony. They are also reportedly behind minor thefts in the surrounding areas.
Recently, an attempt was made to derail a loaded goods train in Rajasthan’s Ajmer district by putting two cement blocks on track of the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor. The goods train did hit the blocks, weighing around 70 kg each, but it didn’t derail. “Some miscreants put two cement blocks on tracks on the dedicated freight corridor on Sunday. A goods train hit them,” a North Western Railway official had told news agency PTI.