Train rolls off Andhra bridge, 22 killed

WARANGAL: At least 22 people have been killed and over 15 injured when two bogies of the Hyderabad-bound Golconda Express jumped its tracks and plunged off a bridge in Warangal town on Wednesday morning.
According to railway officials, the train was nearing Warangal railway station as the driver lost control a few yards away from the station. The engine and two coaches skidded off its tracks about 10:20 am and fell onto the road, crushing some vehicles.
Police said two auto rickshaws, two scooters and a couple of people selling vegetables on the road were crushed by the engine. They said the toll could rise because dozens of passengers were trapped in the two coaches that fell onto the road.
Heavy rains have hampered rescue operations. Railway officials, however, said nearly all the trapped passengers had been rescued. South Central Railway headquarters, however confirmed only 14 deaths, including 10 passengers and four people who were passing under the bridge. An inquiry headed by the commissioner of railway safety has been ordered.
The accident occurred after the driver noticed brake failure and desperately tried to move the train, coming from Vijayawada, into a loop line, officials said.
Meanwhile, a spokesman of the South Central Railway in Hyderabad said the stranded passengers of the ill-fated train were being brought to the state capital by road.
The railway officials have brought gas cutters to separate the mangled bogies and shifted injured passengers to the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial hospital in Warangal. Heavy duty cranes are also pressed into service to retrieve the bogies.
The dead included, the assistant driver of the train, who apparently made a vain bid to stop the engine.
The train driver, and some passengers said to have shouted at people standing on the railway platform about the brake failure asking them to move away.
Sammaiah, the assistant driver of the train, said he realised that the brakes had failed only three kilometres from the Warangal. "I tried to contact the station master but failed to get any response. By the time all the controls had gone down to zero," he said, lying on a bed in the MGM hospital.
"It was a mechanical failure in the engine," he said.
A similar mishap had occurred at the spot in December 1991 when a goods train plunged from the Road-Under-Bridge, killing seven people.
Today''s crash comes less than two weeks after 51 people died when a train crashed outside a tunnel entrance on the Konkani route after hitting boulders that had fallen onto the track in a landslide.
There were five women and child among the dead. They were identified as Veeraswamy (28), Sivaramakrishna (37), K.S. Rao, Priyanka, K. Anand Kumar (40), Amboji Boby (10), C. Veerabhadraiah (64), Bukki Tore (25), Bukki Buji (30), and Bhagyalakshmi (45).