Tree branches fall on Puri-Howrah Vande Bharat amid storm, cracks windshield

Kolkata: Tree branches fell on the Puri-Howrah Vande Bharat Express during a storm in Odisha’s Jajpur district on Sunday, and got entangled with its pantograph, besides cracking its windshield, officials said.

The incident happened around 4.45 pm between Baitarani Road and Manjuri Road stations, they said.

The Howrah-Puri-Howrah Vande Bharat Express was flagged off by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday, and commenced its commercial run on Saturday.

No one was injured in the incident, a South Eastern Railway official said.

Broken tree branches fell on the train amid a storm and got entangled with the pantograph of the train, which was on its way from Puri to Howrah, he said.

The windshield of the pilot cabin of the train also got cracked as tree branches fell on it as well, he said.

The technical staff of the railways was attending to the train, which was stranded there amid storm and rain, the official said.

”A diesel engine will bring the train to the Manjuri Road station as the pantograph is entangled with the overhead wire. From Manjuri Road, it will work with its own engine upto destination,” an official of the East Coast Railway said.