A Train to Sangam - The Murphy’s Law on Rails

 

   A WDM4, preserved in the National Rail Museum

It was the May of 1991. Rajiv Gandhi had been assassinated in Sriperambudur during a public rally. The country was in grief and turmoil over the death of a vastly popular leader. It was so in-your-face impact of the LTTE terror that it was numbing. The other kind of terror, that we see today, had not yet raised its head. 

But this is the story of a Railway Engine (Locomotive) and the Murphy’s Law. Rajiv Gandhi’s ashes were to be carried in a special train across North India before they were immersed in the Sangam at Allahabad. I was posted as the Divisional Mechanical Engineer (Diesel) in a Locomotive Shed at Mughalsarai. This shed was home to about sixty WDM4 locomotives, one of the finest in the world, when they were built by the ElectroMotive Division (EMD) of the GM/USA. In their heydays they had the honour of hauling the only Rajdhani Express of the time - the New Delhi – Howrah Rajdhani Express. Seventy-two of them were imported when India still had to begin indigenous manufacture of Diesel Locos in a new factory at Varanasi. The WDM4s heralded the transition from Steam Traction to Diesel.

The locomotives were aging and weren’t very reliable by the time I was put in charge of them. When called upon to provide a WDM4 for the special train, I was worried that the locomotive might fail enroute and cause massive embarrassment to the Railways. The train, in its journey, was to stop at many stations, where thousands of mourners would be waiting for the last glimpse of of their popular leader, his ashes. Sonia Gandhi and her two children were traveling in the train along with the urn carrying the ashes of Rajiv Gandhi. It couldn’t get any more special than that. Any failure of the locomotive could delay the train by several hours until a relieving loco was found. The milling crowds could have created a mayhem at all the stations and the administration would have found a scapegoat in me and roasted me alive.

So, I offered my Operating colleague in Lucknow an extra locomotive that would lead or trail the special train a station ahead or behind. The spare locomotive could be quickly brought in to continue the journey in case the train’s original locomotive failed. He was reluctant and told me that he was not responsible if the locomotive failed and that I would be answerable anyway. I told him that it was not a matter of who was accountable but to ensure that the Urn-Special train journeyed though the land unimpeded. I asked him if he was sure he could quickly provide a substitute locomotive in case the main locomotive failed. If he couldn’t do it in a matter of minutes it was he, whose neck would be on the block. He understood the delicate nature of the operations.

An extra locomotive was sent along. And surely, as Mr. Murphy had laid down, the train engine failed enroute. My Operating colleague lost no time in bringing in the spare and seamlessly, without loss of time, attached it to the train. The train journey continued as though nothing had happened.

Nobody knew this story, until today!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1991/05/29/train-bears-gandhis-ashes-to-holy-site/62a886b2-63dd-495c-aafd-6ef165b3989b/