Onset of monsoon also sees more than 400 services delayed. Services on Metro-1 too are hit.
Onset of monsoon also sees more than 400 services delayed. Services on Metro-1 too are hit.
Beginning early Tuesday morning, Central Railway (CR) saw a series of unfortunate events that resulted in as many as 300 services being cancelled by evening and over 400 delayed. The disruption started early morning but failure of the Mandovi Express train and declaration of a building next to the Parsik Tunnel as unsafe compounded the effect.
At around 5.10am, areas like Mazgaon, Vidyavihar, Vikhroli, Bhandup and Thane were water-logged because of heavy rain between 2 am and 3 am because of which trains on all four lines were stopped between 5.53 am and 7.03 am, causing a 30 to 40 minutes delay on the mainline and a 10 to 15 minutes delay on harbour and trans-harbour. “We had already clamped a lot of signals at night itself and the effect was reduced by the time we entered the peak hour but unfortunately,the engine of the Mandovi Express failed at Dadar causing more delay,” said CR chief public relations officer, Narendra Patil.
With the Mandovi Express failing on the fast line at Dadar between 9.30 am and 10.30 am, fast trains between CST and Kurla towards Kalyan were diverted to the slow line, compounding the delay. Around the same time, trains headed for CST started getting delayed with officials forced to run all trains between Diva and Thane at a restricted speed after hutments near the Parsik Tunnel and right next to the track were declared unsafe. “The Mandovi’s engine had failed and half-an-hour before that, we had received communication that part of the wall of a structure was slipping towards the track near Parsik Tunnel because of a mud-slide. We had restricted the speed of trains in the area but it had a cascading effect and that is why, the crowd began to increase at Diva,” added Mr Patil.
In the middle of all this, commuters at Diva tried a rail-roko by stopping the Panchvati Express. However, the Railway Police Force (RPF) present managed to disperse the crowd. Diva has always been a bit of a trouble spot after last year when rioting commuters destroyed railway property and people were injured in the bargain. “Commuters did attempt a rail-roko but we had already put enough men there for such situations and were able to disperse the crowd,” said RPF divisional security commissioner, Sachin Bhalode.
Thane Municipal Corporation’s request for a one-hour block from 1.40 pm to 2.40 pm to break down the crumbling wall themselves before it tumbled onto the tracks and endangered passengers’ lives was the final nail in the coffin. Add to that, the block was overshot by TMC with services resuming on the fast line as late as 4.45 pm, a good one hour after they were supposed to resume. “We will be seeing the repercussion of the block not having been resumed on time during evening peak hours but we are trying our best to run as many trains as we can,” said Mr Patil.
Metro services were also hit. Mumbai Metro One Private Limited (MMOPL), which claims to be one of the best at running Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar (VAG) Metro-1 on time once again failed, with services getting delayed during late evening rush hour on Tuesday. The delay followed after a technical glitch was identified on one of the rolling stocks of the metro. Services between Ghatkopar and Andheri faced problems due to delay. An MMOPL spokesperson said, “Due to some technical problem, one of the trains was withdrawn. Due to resultant bunching, two consecutive trains were delayed for around three minutes.” However, he did not give details on the technical problem that caused the delay.
