Railway traffic halted briefly as LPG leaks from tanker in Amreli

The railway line connects the busy Pipavav port to the railway network of India. Nearly a dozen goods trains ply on it every day.

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Operation on to contain gas leakage from tanker, in Amreli on Tuesday. (Express Photo)

Traffic came to a halt on a section of the Pipavav-Surendranagar railway line near Lilia-mota in Amreli Tuesday after liquified petroleum gas (LPG) leaked from one of the 20 gas tankers of a train headed to Haryana due to “excessive pressure”.

Firefighters managed to contain the leak and the tanker was chugged back to a gas terminal at the Pipavav port, officers said. “The safety relief valve and top lid of the tanker were leaking the gas apparently due to excessive pressure. We sprayed water over the tanker and managed to cool it down after around two-and-half hours. Once the tanker was cooled, its valve and the lid shut down automatically,” fire officer Harikrushna Gadhavi, who led the operation to contain the gas leakage, said.

Later, a team from the company that had dispatched the gas tanker also reached the spot and ran checks on the tanker to detect any leakage. “There was no leakage detected. But for safety, they decided to take the tanker back to Pipavav,” Gadhavi added.

The goods train, originating from the Pipavav port, was on its way to Lalru bottling plant of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited.

“Our staff noticed gas leaking from one of the tankers and halted the train at Lilia Mota railway station at 3:40 pm. The leakage was controlled and the train traffic was restored at 6:35 pm,” Mashooq Ahmed, senior divisional commercial manager of Bhavnagar division of the Western Railway, said.

Power supply in the railway line as well as in the nearby villages was shut down as a precautionary measure following the leakage, officers said.

The railway line connects the busy Pipavav port to the railway network of India. Nearly a dozen goods trains ply on it every day.

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