A track maintainer who had won awards for averting possible accidents and his colleague were run over by train on Varadapura-Bisanatam stretch near Bangarpet in the early hours of Thursday.
The deceased have been identified as Hari Singh Meena, a track maintainer from Jodhpur, and Ramaswamy, a patrolman from Chittoor district in Andhra Pradesh.
They were performing cold weather track patrolling on the section of Bengaluru – Chennai route when they were run over by a train around 2.20 am, the South Western Railway said in a release.
Ramakrishna, also a railway patrolman, noticed the incident and alerted the assistant station master of Varadapura at about 3 am.
Senior railway officials rushed to the site and an ambulance was arranged. A doctor of railway department who reached the site declared both Meena and Ramaswamy dead.
The bodies were shifted to government hospital in Bangarpet for post-mortem.
Railways takes up patrolling of the track in the midnight when the temperature falls to detect if there is any rail/weld failure and thereby to prevent accidents. Meena had detected two such failures in the recent past in his service and was awarded by Railways.
Deccan Herald is on WhatsApp Channels| Join now for Breaking News & Editor's Picks