With several cases of burning trains, the Railways on Thursday admitted that it has not succeeded in preventing travelers from carrying inflammable materials. But the Railways claimed that even though it was the largest passenger network operation in the world with 25 million passengers per day, the safety record of the Indian Railway has been improving over the years.
The number of accidents has come down from 325 in 2003-04 to 121 in 2012-13. The train accidents per million train kms is only 0.12 which is amongst the best in the world. The causalities in Railway accidents per year have also reduced from 156 in 2003-04 to 80 in 2012-13.“It has been found that in nine out of 13 cases, fire was caused by inflammable materials carried by passengers,” Railway Board (CRB) chairman Arunendra Kumar said at an international conference on fire safety on running trains.
Kumar said passengers carry battery, alcohol and other inflammable materials in trains, and there were also cases of fire caused by passengers smoking in rail premises. He also said that short circuit was also one of the reasons for fire in the trains.“We are making concerted efforts to educate passengers not to carry inflammable materials in trains as passenger safety is our top priority. But we have not succeeded in preventing passengers from carrying these materials,” Kumar said.
As per using foreign technologies, Kumar said it has to be as per the Indian condition because ours is a different railway system. Railways has installed fire alarm system in Jammu Rajdhani and Bhubaneswar Rajdhani and intends to install the same system in 29 more trains in next six months Railway Minister Mallikarjun Kharge who inaugurated the International Technical Conference on ‘Emerging Fire Protection Technologies for Rolling Stock’ said that Indian Railways inducted new technologies in every area of railway operations and there has been a steady decline in railway accidents.Member Mechanical, Railway Board, Alok Johri said that Railways has always accorded highest priority to the safety of passengers and has been upgrading its infrastructure including rolling stock to ensure better safety of passengers.
The two days conference is being organized by the Institute of Rolling Stock Engineers (IRSE) and Indian Railways Service of Mechanical Engineers Association (IRSMEA) with support from Indian Railways and RITES have expert views from nine countries including Germany, Australia, UK, Japan, France, Belgium, Austria, Poland and Italy.