LUCKNOW: All aboard – except for the chair. New Delhi-Lalitgram Vaishali Express was ready to leave Gorakhpur, but the train manager was not. Ramashish Das found his guard coach short of a seat and raised a safety flag, adding 69 minutes to a train already running 31 minutes late.The train reached Gorakhpur at 9.48am Monday against its scheduled 9.17am arrival. It was due to leave at 9.27am but finally pulled out at 10.36am.Das, 59, who took charge at Gorakhpur, photographed the coach and alerted railway control officials at Varanasi and Sonpur. “Safety comes first. I refused to overlook the missing chair because I considered it a safety issue,” he said, adding that a train manager could not be expected to work for more than eight hours without proper seating, particularly on a train travelling above 100kmph.“I was aware that delaying the train could lead to questions, but felt proceeding without raising the issue would make me responsible if anything went wrong during the journey,” he said.Railway staff told Das a chair would be arranged at Deoria. A plastic stool eventually arrived there – putting a seat under his safety concerns.Vaishali Express reached Deoria Sadar 82 minutes late, Siwan 74 minutes late, Chhapra 67 minutes late, Sonpur 77 minutes late and Muzaffarpur 78 minutes late. The delay widened further later in the journey.NER chief PRO Sumit Kumar said East Central Railway had been officially asked to look into the matter. Das has about eight months left before retirement. His last stretch on the railway has acquired an unlikely footnote: a train lost time because a chair lost its place.
