Commuters are stranded at Borivali station due to delay of services by Western Railways from Dadar to Churchgate in Mumbai. (Photo: Mrugesh Bandiwadekar)
Commuters are stranded at Borivali station due to delay of services by Western Railways from Dadar to Churchgate in Mumbai. (Photo: Mrugesh Bandiwadekar)
The Western Railway (WR) saw 80 services cancelled and 100 delayed when all the four lines came to a standstill due to power fluctuation and the failure of the back up systems to kick in on the first day of the week.
Although the disruption — between 11.18 am to 12.23 pm — did not hit the peak working hours, it created serious damage to services. Commuters like Aakanksha Bajpai (25), a writer, who was travelling from Mahim to Andheri at the time, said she was stuck at the platform for almost an hour. “I reached Mahim at around 12.15 pm and realised that the trains were running late. At first I thought it wasn’t much because there was hardly any rain but I was stuck for around one-hour. I kept checking the Western Railways’ Twitter handle since the announcements were very vague,” she said.
Another commuter, Shrutika Maheshwari (24), a student who was returning from her classes, said she reached the station at around 12 pm and saw that none of the trains were leaving the platform. “At first I thought it must be a small glitch because the Western Railway does not get as affected in heavy rains as the Central Railways does so I kept waiting and ended up catching a taxi back home because I felt that the system might be down for a long time. The announcements were being made but I rarely pay attention to them, nowadays the Railways is more active on Twitter,” she said.
This has been the second major disruption on the WR even as the monsoon is yet to hit the city in full swing. The earlier incident had occurred on May 14 when all the signals at Goregaon had failed, as a result of which 40 services were cancelled.
