Breached railway track restored

 P. SAMUEL JONATHAN

Workers engaged by South Central Railway carrying out restoration work on the breached portion of railway track at Reddygudem village in Sattenapalli on Thursday.—Photo: T. Vijaya Kumar

A combination of man and machine is at work at the breached railway track at this village, digging, levelling, shovelling the boulders of the railway lines to make the track functional from Friday.

It was a truly a test of character as the workers slugged it on the elevated and reinforced bund placing the concrete slabs on the ground and riveting the railway tracks.

It was a week ago that the 2.50-km railway track here developed breach after a great surge of water from a water tank ripped it, minutes after the Vikarabad- bound Palnadu Expressed chugged away. Thanks to the efforts of a dedicated team of South Central Railway engineers, the track is now open for regular trains from Friday.

Ravindra Gupta, General Manager, SCR, Secunderabad, inspected the track on Thursday morning. Vijay Sharma, Divisional Railway Manager, Guntur, who has been personally monitoring the restoration work, was also present.

The railway ballast light weight engine was run on the tracks at 10 p.m. on Thursday and the first train is expected to roll on at 7.30 am on Friday.

This is the longest breach in the history of South Central Railway in terms of length reminding one of the most tragic railway disasters in recent memory, the Valigonda accident, in which 69 persons were killed when the bogies of Delta Passenger was swept away in flash floods.

This time, a disaster of gigantic proportion had been averted as the Palnadu Express just left the track ten minutes earlier. A surge of water from a nearby irrigation tank crashed into the concrete mound above a Road Under Bridge, sweeping off the railway tracks and shovelling them to a distance of 50 metres.

Within hours, a team of engineers from Guntur and Secunderabad arrived at the spot and took stock of the situation. Later work began and the men the machinery were mobilised within hours. Boulders, metal and dust was procured from local quarries in Perecharla. A road has to be laid from the Guntur-Hyderabad highway to allow trucks. Over 2,000 men and women worked in two shifts to complete the work within four days.

Challenging task

The initial challenge was working in slush and the mud on the track. The reinforcement was done using boulders and metal.

The SCR engineers used Plazer Quick Relaying System to complete the 90,000 cubic metres of earthen work in a record span of four days.