A viral video purportedly capturing events inside the engine cab of the Kolkata-Sairang Express just before its derailment on Wednesday morning at Digaru Railway Station near Guwahati in Assam shows that both the loco pilot and assistant loco pilot applied all brakes and struggled to stop the train, but failed.
Neither the authenticity of the video could be independently verified, nor did the Northeast Frontier Railway issue any statement on it. Soon after the accident, the Northeast Frontier Railway stated that the loco pilot could not control the train, resulting in the derailment. In the video, apparently recorded just after the brakes were applied, one of the crew members can be heard saying that all types of brakes, including the emergency brake, had been applied, but the train did not stop.
“Dekhiye BP kam nahi ho raha hai (See, the BP pressure is not dropping),” the loco pilot says, suggesting that the Brake Pipe (BP) pressure was not dropping, which is necessary for the brakes to be applied.
He goes on to say that he had applied all types of brakes available in the locomotive cab - emergency, loco brake, A-9 - but none worked, suggesting a possible failure. “Kuch bhi kaam nahi kar raha hai (Nothing is working),” he says. The video ends with the engine hitting a dead end and coming to a halt with a heavy jolt. Senior loco pilots who viewed the video said the crew member’s statement that the BP pressure was not dropping even after the emergency brake was applied was incorrect, as the display metre (also called BP gauge) showed that the BP pressure had already dropped to nearly zero.
“The crew might have made an incorrect statement out of panic. However, the fact remains that despite the BP pressure being zero, the train was not stopping. If you notice the speedometer in the video, the speed hovers around 40 and even goes above it during the 45-second recording. The train stopped only after it overshot the red signal, hit a dead end and eventually derailed,” a senior loco pilot said.