Treno devia 980 km
L'espresso speciale per circa 980 pellegrini diretti da Tirupati a Varanasi, India, ha sbagliato tre scambi di fila e viaggiato 980 km nella direzione opposta prima che i responsabili della ferrovia se ne accorgessero su segnalazione dei passeggeri, giunti a destinazione dopo un viaggio totale di 2.300 km.


Train loses track, turns up at wrong station. In a case of serious lapse, an express train en route to Varanasi lost its way and ended up at a wrong destination. Interestingly, the authorities realized the mistake only after passengers started screaming about the train's "changed" path. The train passed through three railway divisions before the gaffe was noticed and the top bosses in all the three divisions are now looking for 'scapegoats' at the field level to escape the axe. Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), which runs special trains between pilgrim destinations, planned a train from Tirupati to Varanasi via Bhubaneswar. The special train left Tirupati around 7pm on Tuesday and reached Vijayawada at 8.30am on Wednesday. Around 1pm, the train chugged into Kazipet station in Warangal, even as the bewildered passengers looked on helplessly. The furious passengers then informed the station authorities, who immediately alerted the divisional officers at Secunderabad. The mistake was noticed only after a divisional operations manager in Secunderabad swung into action and asked the authorities at Vijayawada to revert the train to Vijayawada for its onward journey to Bhubaneswar via Vizag section. Since it was a special train, many of the on-duty staffers were not aware of the train schedule either. While the train was given clearance to chug back to Vijayawada much to the delight of the harried passengers, the top officials of Guntakal, Vijayawada and Secunderabad divisions had three-hour teleconference wherein it was found that a communication gap had led the train to the wrong route. The authorities at the Guntakal division (under which Tirupati station functions), who handed over the train to Vijayawada division officials at Renigunta station, had wrongly mentioned the destination station code resulting in the chaos. They mentioned the code of Bilaspur station (BSP) instead of Bhubaneswar (BBS) during the handing over of the train chart, leading the officials at Vijayawada to allow the train to take the Warangal route for journey to Bilaspur. The train left Gudur station around midnight. After realizing the major goof-up, the authorities brought the train back to Vijayawada to proceed to Bhubaneswar for its onward journey to Varanasi... Times of India