Resuming Upcountry Rail Line: Govt claims decision was a collective one

The decision to resume train services on the Upcountry Railway Line was made following a collective assessment by all the relevant agencies involved in the restoration process, Cabinet of Ministers Spokesperson Dr Nalinda Jayatissa said. He said that the Railways Department, the National Building Research Institute (NBRI) and other institutions had worked together from the initial assessment of the affected areas through to the restoration work and the test run of the Line. Speaking at Tuesday's (6) weekly Cabinet media briefing, he made the remarks while responding to allegations that train services had been resumed without obtaining the necessary clearance from the NBRI. He stressed that the restoration and resumption of services were not decisions taken by the Department alone, but were the result of the collective involvement of the relevant agencies. “The Department, the NBRI and all the institutions involved in the restoration worked together during the reconstruction, restoration and the initial test run of the Line,” he said. Dr Jayatissa said that all relevant parties had been involved from the identification of the terrain and the assessment of the site to determining when train services could resume.

The Railway Station Masters’ Association had alleged that the Department resumed services on the Line without NBRI approval following restoration work. A member of the Association said that the only solution available to the Department is to run a trial train to ensure that no derailment or rockfall has occurred and that the path is clear.

The allegations came after a train travelling from Peradeniya to Colombo Fort derailed at around 5.30 a.m. on Monday (5) after colliding with fallen earth and rocks between Kadugannawa and Ihala Kotte. Train services on the Line were subsequently suspended. While restoration work was underway, another landslide occurred at around 6.20 p.m. in Angunawela between the Peradeniya and Gelioya Railway Stations.

Dr Jayatissa reiterated that the decision to resume services had been reached through the collective involvement of the relevant agencies, rather than through an isolated decision by the Department.

Denying the allegations by the Association, the NBRI confirmed that the service on the Line had resumed with approval. The NBRI clarified that investigations and observations of the Line had not been conducted along the entire Line, but that special observations had been carried out. It noted that the risk of possible landslides and rocks falling still remains. Speaking to The Daily Morning, NBRI Senior Scientist Wasantha Senadheera said that the broken bridges and railway tracks had been repaired. “It is a natural phenomenon that rocks come down in the Upcountry area, and it is impossible to say that it won’t happen again. In the future also, there is a possibility that these types of incidents would happen,” he said. He said that it is impractical to observe every location along the Railway and that, in this particular incident, the place where the rock had fallen was not a location where such an incident had occurred previously.