It was by a quirk of circumstance that my friend and batch mate AGA and I found ourselves in the office of Mr. Vaithialingam at Railway Headquarters one day about the end of June 1960. This amiable, gentle person was the Chief Engineer, Way and Works, Sri Lanka Railways.
Year after year for several years he [...]
Never a day passes without some incident in the railways – derailments, delays, strikes, etc. To get to the root cause, it is best to go back to the era of the legendary B. D. Rampala and before, when the trains ran to time and derailments, accidents were very very rare.
The derailments are mainly due [...]
The C.G.R. Station Masters’ Union, which struck work at midnight on Monday, protesting over salary anomalies, has decided to continue the strike crippling train services across the country.
Yesterday morning a number of railway stations did not issue tickets to commuters and people had travelled without tickets.
A Transport Ministry spokesman told The Island that the Ministry [...]
While Transport Minister Dullas Alahapperuma recently laid the foundation stone for the proposed dormitory for train and bus commuters in Colombo, the pro – JVP Railway Trade Unions want the sanitation facilities at the Fort Railway Station, presently controlled by a private company, to be taken back by the Railway Department, as commuters had to [...]
While the rail engine (591) severely damaged by the Tsunami four years ago had been re-deployed on Friday (26), after extensive repairs, railway trade unions said that an engine sent for repairs to DIMO Ltd., hadn’t been repaired due to negligence on the part of the administration.
For want of payment, it had been left there [...]
Bamunuarachchige Don Rampala, the eminent engineer in Sri Lanka’s engineering history.
Probably, travelling to school by train on the narrow gauge he would have got a liking to join the Railway.
He joined the Railway as a Probationary Engineer and underwent training at the Ratmalana Railway workshops. The Senior Supervisors used to relate, how donning the overalls’ [...]
Trade unions affiliated to Sri Lanka Railways have charged that the leasing out of the southern coastal railway line to an Indian rail construction company on July 21 (Monday), was the first step toward the planned railway privatisation programme.
The government on Monday leased out the southern coastal railway line from Galle to Matara to Indian [...]
Secretary, All Ceylon Railway Employees General Union (ACREGU) Sumathipala Manawadu told The Morning Leader that the Railway Ministry’s failure to provide protection to train commuters led to the latest disaster on Monday that claimed nine lives.
“Subsequent to the February 3 suicide bomb attack at the Fort Railway Station that killed 14 and injured more than [...]
