Now, Railways installs dead-end buffers to stop trains

New Delhi, Jan 26: In order to avoid accidents due to brake failure or human errors at stations, the Indian Railway has installed dead end buffers that are capable of stopping a moving train.

The move will help the national transporter to protect the rolling stock as well as passengers in case a train fails to stop at the platform.

According to the Western Railway zone, the newly developed buffer is based on hydro pneumatic principle of shock absorbing. With 1254 KJ capacity of energy absorption, the buffer has been designed to arrest a 15 car EMU train (1300 MT mass) at a speed of 5 km per hour. One of its unique features is that its characteristics change according to operational needs.

There are a total of 43 number of dead-end buffers that are available in Mumbai suburban area. Out of these 43 dead-end buffers, as many as 38 buffers are conventional buffers, while rest of the 5 buffers are hydraulic buffers.

Train accidents:

20 March 2015 - In Uttar Pradesh, The Dehradun-Varanasi Janata Express derailed near Bachhrawan, resulting in at least fifty-eight deaths and 150 people being injured. The driver reported by radio that the brakes on the train had failed, and that he could not stop the train. It was diverted into a siding and crashed through the buffers at Bachhrawan.

In the same year, on 28 June 2015, a local train in Mumbai crashed into a buffer on platform no. 3 of Churchgate station in Mumbai. 6 people were injured in the accident. The hydraulic buffer used to slow the impact did not function and the train overshot the platform.

What is a Buffer stop?

A buffer stop, bumper, bumping post, bumper block or stopblock (US), is a device to prevent railway vehicles from going past the end of a physical section of track.

The design of the buffer stop is dependent, in part, on the kind of couplings that the railway uses, since the coupling gear is the first part of the vehicle that the buffer stop touches. The term "buffer stop" is of British origin, since railways in Great Britain principally use buffer-and-screw couplings between vehicles.