The Central Railway (CR) began the Sunday block for Alternate Current (AC) testing, originally scheduled from 12 am to 6 am, an hour later at 1 am, after commuters at Vashi demanded one more service to be run towards CST.
Commuters went to the station master’s office and said that the last local for CST had left Vashi as early as 10.30pm on Saturday and as 10.30 pm was too early, another train headed for CST was required. “Commuters said they thought that the block was supposed to start at 12 am but we had given out an informed timetable in which we stated that the last train towards CST would leave at 9.59 pm,” said an official, on condition of anonymity.
The official said that commuters refused to let the station in-charge leave till another train was arranged. “They said that they wouldn’t let him go home for the night unless a train was arranged. As a result, we ran a train as late as 11 pm and delayed the block to 1am. However, we did not lose any time because of this change and managed to start trains at 6 am on Sunday,” he said.
The CR had taken the block to conduct test charging of the long-awaited change of Harbour line from 1,500 volts of Direct Current to 25,000 volts of AC. Although the test charging was successful, this is the fourth such incident since January this year where commuters have shown aggression.
