Part of an earth embankment near Kadigamuwa railway station collapsed onto the track on Wednesday evening, halting a Colombo–Peradeniya train at Rambukkana — the second time this month that falling earth has blocked the line at that location.
The train that left Colombo Fort at 5.15 p.m. for Peradeniya was stopped at Rambukkana station because of the obstruction, the Daily Mirror reported. Railway workers reached the site and began clearing the soil.
Services were running again later the same evening. Trains are “operating without obstruction” after workers cleared the earth from the line, Hiru News reported, which carried the same departure time and the same halt at Rambukkana.
The word doing the work is “again”
The Daily Mirror’s headline says the embankment collapsed “again” without saying when it last did. It was nine days earlier.
On 5 October, earth and rocks came down onto the track on the same stretch and derailed the Peradeniya–Colombo Fort express, taking the engine and one carriage off the rails and suspending services. Daily Mirror placed that incident between Gangoda and Kadigamuwa; NewsFirst placed it between Ihala Kotte and Kadigamuwa; a later Daily Mirror filing named all three stations. Stranded passengers were taken off at the Kadigamuwa bus road and bussed to Rambukkana.
Two earth failures at the same place in nine days is the fact neither filing states.
On track reopened twelve days ago
The context makes the repetition more than routine. This section of line had been severed for ten months by Cyclone Ditwah. It reopened to Peradeniya and Gampola only on 2 October, after repairs to 103 damaged locations between Rambukkana and Gampola — including 36 major landslides and 67 earth slips and rock falls — at a cost of roughly Rs. 1 billion so far. The National Building Research Organisation certified the track as safe before services resumed.
So the sequence is: reopened 2 October, rockfall derailment 5 October, embankment collapse 14 October.
Between the first two of those, the Sri Lanka Railway Station Masters’ Association alleged that services had resumed without NBRO clearance and called for a fresh assessment before trains continued to run. Wednesday’s collapse is the second earth failure since that warning was made.
A note on which line this is
Outlets file this stretch inconsistently. The Daily Mirror treats it as the Main Line; NewsFirst and the Railway Department have described the 5 October closure as affecting the Upcountry Line. Both labels are used for track below Peradeniya. It is not the Northern Line, despite the Colombo Fort departure.
Not reported
Neither filing gives the volume of earth involved, says whether rain preceded the collapse, or states how long the line was blocked. Neither says whether this is one of the 103 locations repaired after Cyclone Ditwah, whether the NBRO has been asked to reassess the slope, or whether the Station Masters’ Association’s call for a fresh safety assessment has been acted on. Neither names a railway official.
