Train on reverse journey

Bangladesh can spring surprises for the rest of the world to marvel at. It has happened in case of the country's development parameters and now the long neglected railway perhaps wanted to capture world attention. Or, how else can a train on its own decide to go back to the direction from which it came without completing the journey? Both the driver and the guard reportedly got down to have a cup of tea at a station midway and asked the assistant driver to check the engine. What the assistant driver did is unclear. Reports published in a few Bangla newspapers point accusing fingers at this person. He put the engine on auto gears and the train then started moving backward automatically. Other reports say the engine shifted to auto gears accidentally.

Isn't it impossible for an engine to shift to auto gears? Until this mystery is solved, this incident will symbolically represent the reverse journey the country's railway is on. It is impossible to make one believe that anything bizarre of this order can ever happen without the helping by some genie or supernatural spirit. But it happened in reality. Thousands of people saw the driverless train merrily going backwards in the direction of Kushtia whereas it was supposed to progress further towards Faridpur. For the first few minutes the 150 or so passengers on board were either confused or ignored the matter. But then they realised the danger.

Mercifully, they were not too panicked to jump out of the compartments. Credit largely goes to a ticket collector who had to convince them to stay calm and at the same time try to stop the train. He even encouraged a few passengers to help him release the vacuum breaker of the hose pipe between carriages and thus bring the train to a halt. Luckily, no other train was running on that 26 km segment of railway track then. If one did, there was a chance of one of the worst railway disasters happening on that day.

An investigation team has been formed to look into the incident. Let it have the right answer to the shifting to the auto gear. The kind of callousness demonstrated in this case marks the country's transport sector. Admittedly, a driver is in need of refreshment but then how the man behind the steering wheel will meet his biological need should not be left to his discretion only. There should be clear guidelines for him to follow. If he has to leave the engine, should it be kept in the running mode or will his assistant be assigned the responsibility to keep watch? But if the assistant is knowledgeable like the one involved in this incident, rationality demands he would stop the engine before leaving it.

Human error is unavoidable. But technologies have developed systems, particularly where many people's lives are concerned, to ensure that there is enough time for correction of such errors before the tragedy really occurs. If someone does it deliberately like the German co-pilot who smashed a passenger airliner against the French Alps, that is a completely different issue. Auto back-up measures must be kept ready to take over whenever a human being fails.