Four farmers ran for over 500 metres on railway tracks waving a red towel to stop a train from the opposite end and avert a derailment after one of them spotted a crack on tracks near Birbhum’s Ahmedpur station around 9am on Wednesday.
A railway official said the special train had been carrying railway staff from Birbhum’s Rampurhat to Burdwan. There were around 300 passengers on board.
Sources said Pradip Sarkar, a farmer from Kusumjatra village in Birbhum’s Sainthia, was walking on the road along the tracks when a good train passed him by with what seemed to the farmer an “unusual sound”. The farmer checked the tracks closely and spotted a gap of around 5 inches on the tracks.
Sarkar immediately called three other farmers and they started walking towards a level crossing, around a kilometre away, to inform the gateman about the crack. On their way, they saw a passenger train speeding on tracks.
The train halted by villagers near Ahmedpur in Birbhum on Wednesday. Ramprasad Baidya
“Fearing an accident, I asked my friend Jibon Das (one of the farmers) to wave a red towel as we ran towards the train to draw the driver’s attention. After we had run for about 500 metres, the driver saw us and stopped the train,” Sarkar added.
Railway officials admitted that had Sarkar and his friends not intervened on time, the passenger train could have met with an accident.
“The passenger train was travelling at a good speed and the crack was enough to derail it. After the train stopped, a team of railway staff repaired the tracks. The train was delayed by an hour,” an official said.
Another official said a change in temperature around this time of the year could account for the crack. “We thanked villagers for their timely effort in preventing an accident,” he said.
“This crack was either missed by the inspection team or it happened after the last inspection,” an official of the railway inspection team said.
Nikhil Kumar Chakrobarty, the chief of public relations officer of Eastern Railway, said the crack was repaired immediately.
