After the second incident of derailment on the Neral-Matheran route of the toy train on Sunday, the Central Railway (CR) has stopped all services on the same route.
After the second incident of derailment on the Neral-Matheran route of the toy train on Sunday, the Central Railway (CR) has stopped all services on the same route.
The second derailment took place a little while after the train crossed the Aman Lodge station at around 7.40 am on Sunday morning, when it was around 100 tourists on board. A coach of the train derailed after the driver hit the breaks when cattle came in front of the train out of nowhere.
Officials have taken a call to completely shut down the services until further notice since it was only a week ago that the same train had derailed at the very same spot a week ago on May 1, both days being Sundays when the train sees its maximum patronage. “Usually we shut down the train around monsoon time at June 15, but since there has been severe criticism it has been decided to cancel the services completely,” said an official on the condition of anonymity.
CR used to run 12 services on the route per day but it cost Rs 9 crore per year to keep it operational while CR earned Rs 3 crore from it. “This was not enough to even provide for the salaries of the 1,200 railway employees work on this line. By shutting down this line we accept the system is too old and that CR doesn’t want to take any risks any longer,” he said.
