Indian Railways on Monday ordered an investigation after a runaway freight train loaded with gravel travelled 70km without a driver.
Around 50 carriages set off solo, careering from Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir to Punjab’s Hoshiarpur, before being brought to a halt by wooden blocks placed on the tracks.
“We have ordered an inquiry,” Northern Railways spokesman Deepak Kumar told AFP, adding that no one was hurt in the incident.
The train, running at 100kmh, was captured in a video that went viral on social media.
The incident happened after the train stopped at Kathua railway station for a crew change, local media reports said.
But it began moving down a slope after the driver and his assistant got off.
Indian media reports said the pair did not apply the skid brakes.
Director for the Ministry of Railways in Jammu and Kashmir Prateek Srivastava told CNN: “Due to reasons unknown, the (locomotive) pilot and the assistant pilot got off. As soon as they left, the train started rolling down. They could not get back on it.”
Officials closed off railway crossings on the train’s path to avoid accidents. Wooden blocks were then placed on the track to reduce the speed of the train and, eventually, they brought it to a stop.
At least four people have been suspended following an inquiry into the incident, and a high-level investigation is currently underway at Kathua railway station.
This is the second such incident in India. In 2018, about 1,000 passengers had a narrow escape when their train, running from Gujarat to Odisha, rolled about 15km without a driver.
The cause of that incident was the same: The driver forgot to apply skid brakes at a station where the engine was being changed.
India has one of the largest railway networks in the world, and an estimated 13 million people travel on trains every day. But, despite significant investment in recent years aimed at modernising the network, a significant proportion of the country’s rail infrastructure is still outdated.
