Earth from a hillside near Kadigamuwa railway station was washed onto the track again on Friday, blocking the line for the third time since services on the Upcountry Line resumed after Cyclone Ditwah.
A section of earth came down onto the track amid heavy rain in the central hills, and railway workers were at the site clearing it, the Daily Mirror reported. The paper states it is the third occasion on which earth from the same hillside has fallen onto the line at that location since trains began running again.
Hiru News reported the same incident in Sinhala, independently describing it as the third such occasion, attributing it to the rain falling across the central hill country, and confirming that railway staff had reached the site and were removing the slipped earth.
Three failures in eleven days
Neither filing dates the two earlier incidents. This desk’s own record does.
- 2 October — the line reopened to Peradeniya and Gampola after ten months severed by Cyclone Ditwah, following 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. The National Building Research Organisation certified the track as safe before services resumed.
- 5 October — earth and rocks came down on the same stretch and derailed the Peradeniya–Colombo Fort express, taking the engine and a carriage off the rails.
- 14 October — part of an embankment collapsed onto the track, halting a Colombo–Peradeniya train at Rambukkana.
Friday’s slip is therefore the third earth failure in eleven days on track that had been open for fourteen. The Daily Mirror’s count and ours agree independently.
Between the first two, 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. Friday’s slip is the second earth failure since that warning.
A question this archive raised has now been answered
Our report on the 14 October collapse noted that no filing said whether rain preceded it. Both of Friday’s filings answer that for this occurrence: the Daily Mirror attributes the slip to “the prevailing heavy rains in the central hills,” and Hiru opens its report with the rainfall. Hiru’s own footage from the scene shows mud washed across the rails and standing water on the formation, with the slipped face of the slope exposed as bare earth.
That is consistent with the weather this desk has been reporting all week, including a severe lightning and flooding advisory on 15 October.
The line label has settled
Our 14 October report flagged that outlets filed this stretch inconsistently — the Daily Mirror treating it as the Main Line, NewsFirst and the Railway Department describing the 5 October closure as affecting the Upcountry Line.
That disagreement has closed. On Friday the Daily Mirror itself calls it “the upcountry railway line,” and Hiru independently uses the Sinhala term උඩරට (Upcountry). Both outlets now agree, and they agree with the Railway Department. It is not the Northern Line, despite the Colombo Fort departures involved in the earlier incidents.
Not reported
Neither filing says how long the line was blocked, whether any train was held or cancelled, or how much earth came down. Neither says whether this hillside is one of the 103 locations repaired after Cyclone Ditwah, whether the NBRO has been asked to reassess the slope after three failures, or whether the Station Masters’ Association’s call for a fresh safety assessment has been acted on. Neither names a railway official, and no statement from the Railway Department or the Ministry of Transport has been reported.
Sources: Daily Mirror, Hiru News (Sinhala).
