A major train mishap was averted on Thursday morning when the crew of the Chennai-Bengaluru Shatabdi Express spotted a rail fracture and immediately warned the station master at Tiruvalangadu station.
The crew of the Shatabdi Express, which was moving slowly near Tiruvalangadu, near Arakkonam, around 7.40 pm, spotted a fracture on the rails in the up line towards Chennai and alerted the station master of nearest station, senior railway officials told Deccan Chronicle.
The stationmaster called the crew of the Tiruttani-Chennai EMU over wireless and asked him to stop the train just in time as the EMU was not far from the fractured spot, sources said.
Railway officials said that it is a miracle that the mishap was averted as it is not easy to spot a fracture on a parallel line from a moving train, especially Shatabdi.
As many as three express trains and as many EMUs on the Chennai-Arakkonam route were delayed for nearly two hours.
The Chennai-bound express train from Trivandrum, the Yeshwantpur-Muzzafarpur Express and the Yelagiri Express were delayed for 45 to 90 minutes, while EMU services were hit for two hours.
Hundreds of passengers on the route, especially regular EMU commuters between Chennai and its surrounding areas, were affected as rail traffic was disrupted during peak hour, between 7.30 am and 9 am.
Several officegoers were late for work by more than an hour because of the rail fracture and the subsequent disruption in service.