TimesView It is nothing less than a miracle that no accident has taken place on these tracks so far. Treating safety of passengers as top priority, rail authorities must ensure replacement of the sleepers at the earliest, even if it means some inconvenience to the people. Officers responsible for the delay in the project must also be held accountable. LUCKNOW: Used well past their fitness limit and capacity, wooden sleepers on platforms 5-6 of Charbagh railway station are a standing invitation to a major accident.More than 25 years old and 800% overused, the tracks are dilapidated and need urgent repairs. Even funds were sanctioned for them in August 2017 but work has not started a year later. According to Northern Railway Lucknow division's train records, 290 trains move through Charbagh station daily. These include mail, express, Memu and freight trains. Of these, nearly 100 trains run through platform 5 and 6. The tracks and wooden sleepers of these two platforms are in a poor condition. Nuts and bolts fitted on the wooden planks are in a fragile condition. A majority of them are missing. Because of this, the planks are displaced from their place and many are broken. These planks are meant to join tracks and also work as shock absorbers, making them very important for safety of train movement.Officials in NR Lucknow division's operations department said that according to the design and operation rules, tracks need replacement either when their age is completed, which is 12 years, or when they have undergone bearing a load of 150 gross metric tonne of train traffic. According to the senior divisional operational manager, the weight of a 24-coach train with 1,200 passengers on board is around 1,000 tonnes. The weight of a freight train with 30 coaches is around 5,000 tonnes. This means that around 1.5 lakh trains should move on a track in an ideal situation.However, according to the commercial department of the division, around 9.1 lakh trains have moved on the tracks of platform 5-6 since the time they were laid. This means the tracks have been used over 800% more than what was optimum.According to officials of Research Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO), if tracks are used nearly 95% more than capacity, they should be changed. Over-use of tracks leads to risk of accidents.Passengers said the condition of tracks brought back horrible memories of train derailments and accidents. But their complaints generally are not heeded. All loco pilots have been given the direction for precautionary speed of 10 km/hour for the movement of train at platform 5 and 6, in order to avoid any kind of mishap.In August 2017, the contract to renovate the tracks was awarded to a Delhi-based company. Around Rs 90 lakh was sanctioned by the Railways for the project to renovate the tracks of platform 5 and 6. But Senior DCM of NR Lucknow division, Jagtosh Shukla, said that due to frequent movement of trains, department failed to take the block at two platforms to refurbish the tracks."But the construction will start soon, as it is a separate project and likely to start this year," he said.Lucknow division DRM (NR) Satish Kumar said: "I know that the tracks are overused. We are trying to complete the project as soon as we can. Probably the work will be completed this year along with the project of yard remodelling."

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