Some thoughts on what little is required to disrupt a complex transportation network.

• Roads. More resilient given that roads are designed to streamline travel, but not necessarily replace driving on dirt. The exception is unnavigable terrain – such as bodies of water or densely packed forest.  Naxals rely on IEDs (to hit the vehicle, not the road), fallen trees (harder to go over) or blowing up bridges to disrupt this system.

• Trains. In contrast, the railway network is designed to replace navigating the uncertain nature of terrain. While the vehicle is less of the target, the network itself becomes more of one. Unfortunately, this makes it extremely unresilient and prone to even minor tweaks to the system sending it non-linear.

In the case of  the Jnaneswari Express, Naxals removed about 50 feet of pandrol clips (designed to hold the track down, picture below) to achieve a instability at high speeds, and then removed a foot long section of track in order to generate a catastrophic event. This is 51 feet of affected track, on a route spanning hundreds of miles.

The Jnaneswari fishtailed but was able to come to a stop with only a few derailed cars, though they came to rest on opposing tracks. However, the system immediately cascaded, as a high speed goods train was approaching from the other side, did not have time to stop and was not informed of the original incident. It hit the cars from the Jnaneswari that lay in its path. 100 are dead so far.

Note. While the sabotage was designed to derail, it would not have been a mass casualty event. Unfortunately, if not now, this kind of cascading failure would have resulted at some point or the other.

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