Part 6.
Singh should have ensured one of his staff locked the point where the loop line and the Avadh-Assam's designated Up line met. This wasn't done. The train cut right across the Up line and settled into the track meant for trains in the opposite direction. On course for disaster.
At about the same time, H.M. Singh made another error. He passed on routine information about the Avadh-Assam Express to the next station, Panjipara. Only, the information was wrong. The express train, he said, was coming on the Up line when it...
more... was actually on the Down line. At the two level crossings outside Kishanganj there was no traffic at that hour. From all accounts, the men manning the crossings adjacent to National Highway 31 did their bit mechanically. They brought down the gates and allowed the train to pass. Not realising that the train was on the wrong track and should have been stopped by using the hand-held signal at the gate. The Avadh-Assam express sped away.
In the driver's seat, Roy didn't seem to think there was anything amiss either. The Up and Down tracks run parallel to each other separated by a few metres, but Roy amazingly didn't realise that he was driving on the right track rather than the left, which is the convention. Signals are a train driver's eyes, and on the Down line along which his train was hurtling, all of them faced the other way -- for the benefit of B.C. Bardhan, driver of the Brahmaputra Mail. As the rain lashed, he might just have seen the green signals given by successive stations slightly to the left of where they should have been. Not noting why they weren't straight ahead, as they usually are, he carried on.
#Continued.......