Railways suspends employee after train from Panipat pulls into wrong station in Delhi
Two trains from towns with similar sounding names – Panipat and Sonepat – arriving at the same time probably caused the confusion, officials said.
Passengers of a New Delhi-bound train ended up at the wrong station in the Capital on Tuesday morning, after the panel operator set the wrong route.
The train, 64464 from Haryana’s Panipat, was to arrive at the New Delhi station at 7.30 am, but instead took a different course and pulled into the Old Delhi Railway station at 7.50 am. The confusion was perhaps because another train from Haryana’s Sonepat was to arrive at the Old Delhi station around the same time, the Hindustan Times reported.
The train from Panipat was then sent back to its actual destination, and the Railways suspended an employee and launched an inquiry. “On realising the mistake, the train was immediately sent back to the New Delhi station,” a statement from the Northern Railway said, according to PTI.
“Similarities in the actual arrival time caused the log operator to mistakenly send the Panipat-New Delhi passenger train to Old Delhi,” northern railway spokesperson Nitin Chowdhary said, according to IANS.
A railway official told the Hindustan Times that the mix-up did not affect the safety of train operations.