The Railway Safety Regulator (RSR) on Tuesday issued a prohibition directive to the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) to prevent it from operating trains on the Saulsville–Cor Delfos rail line until Prasa made a presentation to the RSR proving that the service was safe and that any condition that contributed to a rail accident last week had been eliminated.
Further, the RSR also issued Prasa with an improvement directive, instructing the passenger rail operator to operate trains at a maximum speed of 30 km/h during abnormal working conditions and to ensure that all trains had working radio sets by July 1.
These directives followed the collision of two Prasa trains on January 31, in which one train, travelling on the main line towards Saulville, crashed into a stationary train, resulting in a rear-end collision.
Close to 300 passengers were injured.
The RSR's preliminary investigations revealed that the incident was attributable to signalling-cable theft, which led to the operator undertaking manual authorisation of trains.
It was reported that train 9017 was authorised onto an “occupied” line, where train 9009 was stationary.