Balangir, May 5: Railway traffic returned to normalcy this morning 36 hours after the Koraput-Rourkela Express met with an accident at Sikir railway station near Titilagarh which had paralysed traffic in the Titilagarh-Sambalpur route of the East Coast Railways.

Titilagarh-Howrah superfast Ispat Express was the first train to ply through the route after the accident. “Railway service has returned to normalcy this morning and all the scheduled train running in the route in their time,” Nihar Ranjan Mishra, public relation officer of the Sambalpur railway division, said. On Wednesday, the railway authorities cancelled two trains, diverted five trains, short terminated four trains and rescheduled timing of one train.

In another development, the railway authorities declared an ex gratia of Rs 1 lakh for those severely injured and Rs 10,000 for those who sustained minor injury in the accident.

“We have announced an ex gratia of Rs 1 lakh for the severely injured persons and Rs 10,000 for who sustained minor injury. As of now no casualty have been reported,” said Ashok Gupta, divisional railway manager (DRM) of the Sambalpur railway division.

Seven persons, who had been severely injured, were shifted to Railway Hospital in Visakhapatnam and V.S.S. Medical College and Hospital in Burla. Dr H.N. Dash of the Vedanta Hospital in Bhawanipatna has been shifted to the V.S.S. hospital. Six others — Bharat Pitroda (40) of Titilagarh, Haripriya Sahu (36) of Kesinga, Simran Bibi (48) of Muniguda, Anjana Kulu (20) of Sundargarh, Narayan Ram (30) and Kishna Nandan Ram (32) of Bihar have been shifted to Visakhapatnam.

On Tuesday night, the Koraput-Rourkela Express train rammed into a derailed coal-laden goods train at the Sikir railway station near Titilagarh in which 27 persons were injured.