Monday saw the harbour line shut down for an hour in the afternoon with effects of the delay spilling over to trains towards Panvel, Vashi and Andheri during evening peak hours as well. Nearly 50 services were cancelled and 80 delayed by evening. The problem occurred when all motors of a 12-coach train headed to Panvel failed at Masjid Bunder, causing train services in both directions to stop from 1.15 pm to 2.40 pm in the afternoon.
Anita Chitale, who was travelling from Kurla to Sewri, had to wait for a train for more than half-an-hour between 2 pm and 2.30 pm as all trains were packed to the brim, because of which she had to leave three consecutive trains.
“I was waiting for half-an-hour for a train which I could enter but I was unable to get it. Finally, I got a train at 2.40pm which kept stopping in the middle,” she said.
Many services were cancelled right between 6 pm and 7 pm when the office rush at CST was the heaviest. The crowd kept swelling at Kurla’s platform numbers 7 and 8.
A commuter, Warren Pareira, tweeted, “Kurla’s platform numbers 7 and 8 filled with commuters, trains late, and no announcements.”
Officials said that the rake that failed was originally direct current (DC) and had been retrofitted to alternate current (AC).
“We have been facing a problem on harbour with a lot of retro-fitted and Siemens-make trains failing almost every day after converting to AC 25,000 volts,” said an official on condition of anonymity.
Harbour was converted to AC in June this year and according to officials, these failures will continue till November till teething problems due to the conversion from DC to AC are resolved.
