Two compartments of a Colombo-bound train detached from the engine on January 23 in Sri Lanka. According to the railway authorities,

the compartments detached got detached from the engine at about 7 AM close to the Thalawa railway station. The train was separated from the second compartment that was attached to the engine.

This is not the first time that train compartments had detached from the engine.

A video shared by an onboard passenger shows the two compartments running without the engine for sometime. Once the driver got a wind of the detachment, he slowed down the train only to see the separated coaches ramming onto it from behind.

As the video rushes towards the engine-attached part of the train, the passengers onboard sound frightened. The compartments rammed into the train with a loud thud, hurling many passengers off their seat. According to the eyewitness, there were kids and women onboard the train. Some of them suffered minor injuries in the accident.

On December 4, the Yal Devi train’s compartments were detached from the engine near Irrataperiyakulam, Vauniya. Meanwhile, on the 23rd of August, train compartments detached from an engine between the Gampaha and Weeyangoda Railway stations.

Chief Supervising Officer of the Dematagoda Railway Yard Lalith Fonseka said: “They inspect the compartments and the couplers before a train leaves on a journey. Such incidents don’t happen usually. There are two parts to a coupler, one is this head and the other is the knuckle. And when it is locked, it does not detach and can only be detached during an emergency.