Safety first

Railways must address the basics

The tragic collision between the Sealdah (Kolkata)-bound Kanchanjunga Express and a goods train in northern Bengal suggests that the Indian Railways has not taken on board the lessons from the three-train crash in Balasore, Odisha, just a year ago, which resulted in significant casualties. The cause of one of India’s worst train crashes in decades was the result of flaws in the signalling system. Now, preliminary investigation by the Railways into the Kanchanjunga Express tragedy, in which 10 people have died and over 50 injured, suggests that the accident was caused by a defective automatic signalling system compounded by speeding