RailEnquiry

Amritsar:
With the recent incident in which two coaches of the Garib Rath were gutted, the urgency to implement the railway ministry's proposal to install the fire and smoke detection system has been felt. The proposal dated back to 2010, but the majority of the officials in the Ferozepur division of the Northern Railway are oblivious of this.Majority of the trains running in this region are operating without this safety. Some officials accept the importance of the gadget in the contemporary scenario.The fire and smoke detection system aims to minimise the chances of loss of life and property in the case of a mishap. Fire-related incidents have claimed a number of lives in the recent past.A railway official, on the condition of anonymity, said the Research Design and Standards Organisation had tested the system in one rake of the New Delhi-Bhubaneswar Rajdhani Express, comprising 18 LHB AC coaches, and the cost per coach for such a system was found to be about Rs 2 lakh in 2010. Iqbal Singh, a daily train passenger, expressed concern over the inadequate emphasis being laid on introducing preventive systems in coaches to meet any exigency.Divisional Railway Manager Naresh Chander Goel said fire extinguishers were compulsorily installed in every train and in the recent Garib Rath incident, it came handy to douse the fire.