Rail communication between Sylhet and the rest of the country resumed nearly three and a half hours after the disruption.
According to Abdul Kuddus, officer-in-charge of the Sylhet GRP police station, train operations became fully normal at around 12:30am on Saturday night.
Earlier, at 8:45pm rail communication between Sylhet and Dhaka–Chittagong came to a halt when a wagon of an oil-carrying train (No 952) derailed in Mallikpur area of Fenchuganj Upazila, Sylhet.
Railway sources said that the special tank train, which had arrived in Sylhet at dawn to unload fuel, was returning to Chittagong.
When the train reached Mallikpur at 8:45pm, one wagon’s wheel derailed, leading to the suspension of rail operations on the Dhaka–Chittagong route.
According to local residents and railway officials, the empty oil tanker train, consisting of 17 wagons, had departed for Chittagong. A short distance behind the Fenchuganj rail bridge, two wheels of one wagon went off the track.
Burhan Uddin, the train’s director, said that the authorities were immediately informed after the accident. A rescue engine from Sylhet arrived and removed the wagons from both sides of the derailed coach.
Officer-in-Charge of Fenchuganj police station, Moniruzzaman Khan, said that police and Ansar personnel were deployed at the site soon after the incident. As a result, Dhaka-Sylhet and Sylhet-Chittagong passenger trains were stranded at various stations.
Enamul Haque Zuber, a senior journalist from Sylhet and a passenger on the Dhaka-bound intercity Kalni Express, reported that he was stranded at Fenchuganj Maizgaon Station at around 11:30pm.
Passengers breathed a sigh of relief when train movement returned to normal at around 12:30am.
