Balasore/Bhubaneswar: After 51 hours of intense work of repairing, the down-line restoration work has been completed at the Bahanaga station site in Balasore where the horrific train accident took place two days ago.
Railway Minister Aswini Vaishnaw informed the development through a tweet.
Ministry of Railways tweeted “First train movement started after 51 hours of derailment on down line at Bahanaga Bazar near Balasore in Odisha. A coal loaded train is headed from Vizag to Rourkela through this route.”
Earlier in the day, the minister had said the cause of the accident was related to electric point machine and electronic interlocking.
”The setting of the point machine was changed. How and why it was done will be revealed in the probe report.” ”The root cause of the horrifying incident has been identified… I do not want to go into details. Let the report come out. I will just say that the root cause and the people responsible for the criminal act have been identified,” he said.
Vaishnaw, who had been camping at the site of the train accident along with Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, said two railway tracks have been restored on the main trunk line connecting eastern and southern India and overhead electrification work has also started.
Officials said till the overhead electric cable is repaired, only diesel locomotives can be run and it may take another three days before electric trains can ply.
The ministers said restoration work was being carried out on a war footing and efforts were on to send the passengers back home.
”By Tuesday we should be able to do it,” Pradhan said.
The accident disrupted passenger and goods traffic between important industrial centres. Many of the patients initially admitted to Balasore and other local hospitals have been released or shifted to bigger cities with multi-specialty hospitals including Cuttack, Bhubaneswar and Kolkata.
