ACCIDENT and sabotage prone Northeast Frontier Railway is spending Rs. 100 crore this year to make train travel safe by improving the rolling stock, tracks and bridges,” said the NF Railway general manager, Vipan Nanda. 

He claims that in the past twelve months, the number of train accidents had come down drastically, following stepped up safety  vigil. In this period, the North-East region witnessed 14 accidents, three of which were due to human error and the rest were attributed to insurgent and militant conspiracies and activities. He said that new technology is being put to use to further reduce scope for human error. For example, he said, optical fibre cables are being laid along the train routes for enhanced communication and signalling capabilities. The optical cables would also be used for data communication among the passenger reservation system (PRS) network. On the Guwahati being declared as the dirtiest station, the GM said we are trying to change the situation. The station is going through a Rs 2 crore renovation and by March next year, the North East’s most important railway station would also be a much better railway terminal.

Nanda said extortion demands and kidnappings have become a cause for serious concern among railway employees and contractors. He said that in the Lumding–Badarpur hill section and in some places in Tripura, construction workers are facing a lot of difficulty due to insurgents’ activities. The Lumding–Silchar railway line is being converted from MG to BG. Militants of various hues are making extortion demands almost on a daily basis, affecting pace of work. “We in the railways are working for nation building and the nature of our work locations makes it humanly impossible to arrange for security guards for every worker,” he said. More on the safety aspects of trains, Nanda said: “For the first time in the country, trains in the North East will be fixed with anti-collision devices.”  These devices warn train drivers of objects

ahead, and will be of great help, especially as the New Jalpaiguri-Guwahati section of the main BG track is highly congested.. The load on this track will go down once the parallel BG track on the sector is completed.

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