A burning train speeding past him will remain etched permanently in the memory of 33-year-old Jawahar Singh, who works as a gateman on line crossing no 60, 1.5 km from Gholwad Station, where a major fire broke out in three coaches of Bandra-Dehradun Express.
Recalling the chain of events leading to his alerting the Gholwad Station soon after he noticed leaping from the speeding train, Singh said: “It was a ghastly sight that I will never be able to forget. At 2.32 am when the train sped past me, I saw clouds of smoke billowing from the S3 boogie of the train. Soon afterwards, I flashed red signal to the guard, but the train was tearing away and the guard didn't catch the signal”.
Undeterred Singh sent out emergency distress signals, via his walkie-talkie, to both Dahanu and Gholwad Station Masters. “I asked them to alert the driver and guard of the train about the fire onboard the train and to immediately halt it,” Singh said. His distress messages were acted upon in less than seven minutes of the walkie-talkie communication. The burning train was brought to halt. The affected coaches were detached from the train.
“locals, passengers and myself rescued people trapped in the boogies. However, it proved too late for 5 passengers who had already died due to suffocation,” Singh said. This is not for the first time that Singh has been involved in a rescue operation of this kind. In 2012, on a cold winter night, the same gateman had reported the derailment of a boogie of the Jalgaon-bound Dahanu passenger from the same lC post. A native from Bihar, Singh has been working as a gang man with the Railways since 2007.