Another major rail accident was averted due to an alert loco driver after some miscreants placed an old telephone pole on the rail track between Rampur and Kathgodam here on Wednesday night.
The incident occurred about 500 meters away from the Rudrapur railway station on the Uttarakhand border in the Bilaspur Kotwali area, when the alert driver of the Nsini Jan Shatabdi Express train going to Kathgodam applied emergency brake to stop the train after seeing the telephone pole on the tracks.
In a similar instance earlier too, filled-up LPG cylinders were placed on the tracks near Kanpur which hit the Kalindi Express train a week back. Such incidents have been reported from Ballia and other places in the state as well as other parts of the country.
The police said, the Naini Jan Shatabdi Express train was going from Dehradun to Kathgodam at around 10 pm on Wednesday, and near Balwant Enclave Colony, some 500 meters before Rudrapur railway station in the Kotwali area, the train driver saw a barrier pipe placed on the railway track and stopped the train by applying emergency brakes.
Police say that after this the driver removed the pipe from the track and stopped the train at Rudrapur railway station. The matter was reported to the station superintendent. The train stopped at the railway station for about 15 minutes.
All the railway officials including GRP, RFP, and district police reached the spot in the night itself and investigated the matter. Police recovered an old telephone pole lying near the railway track.