CR, flights crawl during downpour

Mumbai: While the Western Railway (WR) remained unaffected, Saturday’s heavy downpour delayed Central Railway (CR) services by 20 to 30 minutes. As there was no waterlogging on the western line, services kept running smoothly without much delay. In case of the central line though, waterlogging was observed at Kurla, Sion, Vikhroli and Sandhurst Road stations. Meanwhile, due to the weather, the flights at Mumbai Airport were delayed by 20 to 40 minutes. There were no cancellations or diversions noted.

However, the CR stressed that trains were not delayed beyond 10-12 minutes. “The trains on the CR suburban are running with a delay of 10-12 minutes. There was a case of wall debris falling on the railway track early morning on the main line (From CSMT towards Kalyan and Karjat). A tree-falling case was reported in the early morning,” said Sunil Udasi, chief public relations officer (CPRO), CR.

“The debris was removed immediately and for some time, the down slow was diverted to down fast but this happened during non-peak hours early morning. Peak remained normal. Post-peak hours, a block of 30 minutes was also given to help the BMC in the tree-cutting work,” Mr Udasi said.

Meanwhile, no mega block will be observed on the CR mainline on Sunday. “Special power and traffic block for slewing of existing DN local line between Parel and Dadar which was scheduled to be operated on Sunday, has been cancelled due to heavy rainfall,” he added.

Meanwhile, on Mumbai Airport,which is considered the busiest airport in the world, was also affected. Jet Airways announced a 40 minutes delay in departures and 20 minutes in arrivals till 3 pm.