General News of Thursday, 23 December 2010

Source: GNA

Railway traffic warden saves rail accident

Accra, Dec. 23, GNA - The agility of a railway traffic warden statio= ned at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle railway crossing prevented a calamity on Thursday morning when he forcefully ordered the driver of a Yutong bus with registration number GN 2529 10 who ignored warnings and stopped on the rail= s to offload some passengers.

Ghana News Agency observed that the warden signalled vehicles from Kaneshie towards Nkrumah Circle and the opposite direction to stop because a train was approaching. He moved towards the traffic island to lower the rail traffic bar but noticed that the bus driver had parked on the rail line, dropping off some of his passengers.

The warden quickly moved, flapped the red flag vigorously and made gestures towards the driver to move whilst other drivers tooted their horns to draw the driver's attention to the impending danger. Within 60 seconds, the newly inaugurated Accra-Tema train passed. It would be recalled that on May 26, some passengers on a Metro Mass Transit (MMT) bus escaped narrowly when a train hit the front side of the bus which had parked on the rail line, although the driver was injured. The accident occurred in the evening at the Graphic Road level crossin= g in Accra.