Seven empty railway coaches rolled away unattended from the coach maintenance yard at Jolarpettai Junction in Tamil Nadu's Tirupattur district on Monday, November 2, travelling nearly six kilometres without an engine before derailing near Thamaleri Muthur and disrupting train services on the busy Bengaluru-Chennai route, ANI reported.

Source: ANI via Devdiscourse

The coaches had been stationed at the maintenance yard for repair-related work. According to preliminary information reported by ANI, they were pushed by an engine but were allegedly not properly secured or brought under control by railway staff, after which they began rolling on their own, crossed the yard limits and came off the track on the Bengaluru-Jolarpettai main line. No casualties were reported, as the coaches were empty.

Gatekeeper's alert averted a possible collision

A major accident was reportedly averted after the gatekeeper on duty heard the unusual noise of the moving coaches and alerted railway authorities, who stopped trains approaching Jolarpettai from the Bengaluru side at various locations to prevent a possible collision, ANI said. The Free Press Journal also reported the derailment and the disruption to Bengaluru-Chennai services.

Source: The Free Press Journal

Railway personnel rushed to the spot and began a clearance operation to remove the derailed coaches from the main track. Gas-cutting equipment was used to separate the connecting portions of the coaches, while JCB machinery was deployed to push them away from the tracks, according to the reports.

7Empty coaches that rolled away and derailed
~6 kmDistance travelled without an engine
0Casualties reported (coaches were empty)

Several trains on the Bengaluru-Chennai route were delayed, affecting passenger movement on one of southern India's busiest rail corridors. Jolarpettai is a major railway hub with 16 tracks and is described in the ANI report as having the second-largest railway yard in Asia.

The incident has raised questions about safety procedures, operational responsibility and monitoring systems at the Jolarpettai yard, particularly how coaches kept for maintenance work are secured. The account of how the coaches came to roll away remains preliminary, and railway authorities had not, in the reports available at the time of writing, announced the findings of any inquiry.