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Updated: Aug 20, 2019 00:07 IST

Passengers travelling in Visakha Express from Bhubaneshwar to Secunderabad had a narrow escape when the engine of the train got detached from its bogies while the train was on the move in Andhra Pradesh’s Visakhapatnam district on Monday evening, railway officials said.

The incident happened between Narsingapalli and Gullipadu railway stations near Narsipatnam. “The engine got uncoupled from the bogies and went ahead for some distance leaving all the 25 bogies behind. The staff immediately stopped the engine, brought it back to the bogies and recoupled them,” a senior railway official told Hindustan Times on condition of anonymity.

The passengers in the bogies who received a sudden jolt after the engine got detached from the train raised an alarm. They told the local reporters that the engine had travelled for at least three to four kilometres without the bogies.

But the railway official said the engine could have travelled for hardly any distance and it was brought back within a short time for recoupling. “There is a safety mechanism in the train that will bring the bogies to an automatic halt due to lowering of pressure in the brakes. So, there is no possibility of any major accident to the train,” he said.

The official, however, could not explain the reasons for the uncoupling of the engine and the bogies when the train was on the move. “The loco couplers seem to have got detached. They were reinforced and train service was resumed. The exact reason would be known only after the engine is brought to the loco shed and examined,” he said.

The train left Visakhapatnam at around 4.30 pm. Following the incident, the train got delayed by more than half an hour, the railway official said.