For one, there was no official to supervise rescue operations for nearly 10 hours after the accident. The staff of Gaisal station had run away. The collision occurred at 1.53 am on the night of August 1, the first railway official arrived at 11 am and NF Railway General Manager Rajendra Nath reached the site around 2 pm.

Fallout: Hours after the accident, top officials were not even aware of what had happened. From bomb blast to sabotage, conflicting reports were coming in.

The Accident Relief Train, bringing the 140-tonne hydraulic crane from Guwahati, reached Gaisal 21 hours after the accident by which time there was virtually no chance for trapped passengers. Another crane from Asansolreached even later. In the meantime, relief work was being carried out by a 75-tonne archaic steam crane from New Jalpaiguri.

Chief Commissioner Railway Safety (CCRS) M Mani has reportedly taken serious note of the delay. It was found that the crane from Guwahati was transported by a shunting engine (No 36244 WDS), which cannot go faster than 25 kmph. Normally, a crane is rushed through a mainline loco which gets priority over other operations and runs at a speed of 65 kmph.

It is the responsibility of the Chief Operations Officer -- in this case S B Bhattacharya, one of those suspended -- to ensure that the crane reaches the site as quickly as possible. Since it was a shunting engine, it stopped at 20 stations on the way.

`Because a shunting engine is basically used only in the yard, it does not need frequent braking. So powerful brakes are not required. The engine loses power once the brakes are applied and it takes some time for the pressure to build up again. Even the driver of the shunting engineis not equipped to operate long distances and that too in an emergency,' an official said.

Another problem was that the personnel operating the train were not quite adept at it. The hydraulic cranes -- imported from German firm Gottswald -- are relatively new and radically different from the older steam cranes. Sources said skilled personnel were not available and this delayed relief.

Moreover, the `bridge gang' of the Railways was surprisingly not deployed. Said an official: `The bridge gang is trained to make temporary bridges and would have been very helpful when the coaches were telescoped into three storeys. The personnel could have used ropes to get into the coaches to rescue the trapped people.'