The Trans-Harbour line saw 50 cancellations on Monday morning when an overhead wire near Rabale broke. As a result of this, services were suspended for three hours.
The Trans-Harbour line saw 50 cancellations on Monday morning when an overhead wire near Rabale broke. As a result of this, services were suspended for three hours.
This was the second-consecutive day on which the Trans-Harbour services were affected. A similar break down had occurred at Rabale on Sunday too, throwing services out of gear for two-and-a-half hours and causing cancellation of 35 services.
On Monday, the Central Railway (CR) shut down the electrical supply and sent its men to remove the broken wire and replace it with another, This was done between 8.40 am and 11.53 am. The wire had broken on the line of trains running towards Thane at a time that is considered peak hour on that direction. On Trans-Harbour, services were finally resumed between Thane and Vashi at 12.11 pm.
A railway official said, on the condition of anonymity, that it took more time for services to resume as the wire was not only broken but also had got entangled in the pantograph due to which it had to be removed delicately and took up more time. “We had to see to it that the pantograph did not break while de-tangling the wire from it, because if the pantograph broke or got distorted while de-tangling the wire, the disruption in services would have been more severe,” the official said.
Since it was the first working day of the week, office-goers were severely hit by the disruption. Jonathan Pearl (25), who works in a BPO at Ghansoli and resides in Panvel, said, “I was supposed to reach my office by noon. I usually leave my house by 10.45 am and reach the platform at Panvel at 11 am.
But today after waiting for 25 minutes, I went to the state transport bus stand and caught the Thane bus which was almost impossible to get into as it was packed to the seams,” he said.
Officials said that the disruptions seemed to have occurred as a result of ongoing work for the conversion from Direct Current (DC) to Alternating Current (AC), “We suspect that as a result of the work being done for the expected conversion to AC the wires are breaking off. Even after the conversion it will take the Trans-Harbour and Harbour a month or two to stabilise,” he added.
Confirming the number of cancellations, public relations officer A.K. Singh said, “There have been 50 cancellations and it took time for the line to re-start as we had to shut down the power on the line since the repair work was to be done on a high-voltage line,” he said.
Commuters, meanwhile, were asked to travel via Kurla to Thane during the three-hour disruption period.
