The Vaibhavwadi train crash was a fatal train derailment near the village of

Vaibhavwadi Vaibhavwadi taluka is a taluka in Kankavli subdivision of Sindhudurg district in the Indian States and territories of India, state of Maharashtra. It was earlier a small market town by the name Vabhwe. In the early 1980s it was accorded the sta ...

Sindhudurg district Sindhudurg district (Marathi pronunciation: in̪d̪ʱud̪uɾɡ is an administrative district of the Konkan division in India, which was carved out of the erstwhile Ratnagiri district. The district headquarters are located at Oros and the dis ...

Maharashtra Maharashtra (; , abbr. MH or Maha) is a states and union territories of India, state in the western India, western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. Maharashtra is the List of states and union te ...

in India on 23 June 2003.

Overview

The accident occurred at 10.30pm, when the train, bound for

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

from

Karwar Karwar is a seaside city, ''taluka'', and administrative headquarters of Uttara Kannada district lying at the mouth of the Kali river on the Kanara coast of Karnataka state, India. Karwar is a popular tourist destination and with a city urba ...

derailed suddenly as it travelled through a ravine outside the town. The train was a '' Central Railway's Holiday Special'', and had numerous families aboard at the time of the crash. The track had been covered by several large boulders earlier in the day from a landslide down the ravine's side, which had not been noticed due to the remote location. When the train struck the boulders, the engine and first three carriages were thrown in the air by the force of the derailment, and crumpled upon impact. The rescue operation was difficult, because unlike with most Indian train accidents, local people did not see or hear the crash, and thus it was hours before the emergency services were notified, and even longer before they arrived, travelling on bad roads in bad weather. Special emergency trains could not be used either, because of the dangers of further landslides. Thus it was the morning before many of the survivors were freed by soldiers and emergency services. 52 people were killed in the crash and over 100 injured, including 26 in a critical state. Many of those injured in the crash had died in the night because of the difficulties inherent in reaching them in the darkness. The customary one

lakh A lakh (; abbreviated L; sometimes written lac) is a unit in the Indian numbering system equal to one hundred thousand (100,000; scientific notation: 105). In the Indian 2,2,3 convention of digit grouping, it is written as 1,00,000. For ex ...

compensation was presented to the families of those killed. The cause of the crash was determined to have been rocks and earth, which tumbled onto the tracks ahead following a series of earth tremors, to which this area is especially prone. These then caused the engine to leave the rails when it collided with them. There was controversy about the accident though, because the company which runs the service, the

Konkan Railway Corporation Konkan Railway Corporation Limited (KRCL) is an Indian public sector undertaking which operates Konkan Railway and also undertakes other railway-related projects. It is wholly-owned by the Government of India under the administrative control of ...

, has just developed a new type of

Anti Collision Device The anti-collision device (ACD) is a form of automatic train protection used on Indian Railways. Overview The ACD Network is a train-collision prevention system invented by Rajaram Bojji and patented by Konkan Railway Corporation Limited, a pu ...

which would have prevented the crash. The device had been sold to other Indian and foreign companies, but had not yet been installed on their own vehicles.

Similar accidents

Landslides can be classed with washaways. * –

Tangiwai disaster The Tangiwai disaster occurred at 10:21 p.m. on 24 December 1953 when a railway bridge over the Whangaehu River collapsed beneath an express passenger train at Tangiwai, North Island, New Zealand. The locomotive and the first six carriages ...

* –

Veligonda train disaster The Valigonda rail disaster occurred on 29 October 2005 near the town of Valigonda, south of Hyderabad in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. A flash flood swept away a small rail bridge, and a " Delta Fast Passenger" train traveling on it ...

* –

Karanjadi train crash The Karanjadi train crash was an accident resulting in derailment of a passenger train at Karanjadi, a village in Maharashtra, India, on 17 June 2004. 20 people were killed and well over 100 injured in the crash, which was the result of heavy mo ...

* – Bethrungra – 1885 – 7 killed when train derails at

culvert A culvert is a structure that channels water past an obstacle or to a subterranean waterway. Typically embedded so as to be surrounded by soil, a culvert may be made from a pipe, reinforced concrete or other material. In the United Kingdom ...

washaway.

External links

Calcutta Telegraph News Report

expressindia.com News Report

Deccan Herald News Report
{{coord, 16, 32, 24, N, 73, 40, 53, E, region:IN-MH_type:landmark_source:kolossus-dewiki, display=title 2003 disasters in India Derailments in India Railway accidents in 2003 History of Maharashtra (1947–present) Railway accidents and incidents in Maharashtra 2003 in India Sindhudurg district June 2003 events in India